TITLE: Looking for book with good general overview of math and its various branches
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: Is there something in the order of a Goedel Escher Bach type book? If you've read it you know what I mean. Something compelling that you have to read a couple of times in order to start to get it, but it's so interesting you can't put it down!

REPLY [6 votes]: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning is an excellent overview of the full body of mathematics.  It is large (3 volumes), but comes in a paperback edition that includes all three.
The draw is that it is edited by three well-known Russian mathematicians (Aleksandrov, Kolmogorov, Lavrentev) who wrote some of the articles and solicited the rest from many other Russian luminaries.  It was developed as a compendium able to communicate both the vibrancy as well as the importance of each of the areas of the mathematics so that science ministers in Russia could better understand mathematics as mathematicians do. 
The translation into English is excellent.
The first article, a General View of Mathematics, is highly recommended from a philosophical, historical, and phenomenological point of view.