graph_theory 1736-1936.djvu
This book teaches basic graph theory through excerpts from original papers in English translation. In between, the authors discuss the history and the mathematical concepts at an elementary level, hoping that the book may serve as a first textbook of graph theory. I think it could serve this purpose very well. There is a lot of focus on the puzzle-style origins of graph theory, starting with marvelous 18th century classics of Euler and Vandermonde and then including many other charming little topics like for instance a very nice 1895 paper of Tarry on how to find your way out of a maze. There are also topics from other fields (e.g. chemistry), but here I think the background discussions are a bit weak. Something like half the book is centred around the four-colour problem, which is historically faithful and necessary, but it is obviously disturbing that the book ends long before this problem was solved
