You (or others) may like Struik’s A Concise History of Mathematics [1]. It’s also quite easy to read cover-to-cover. My other favorite, Stillwell’s Mathematics and Its History, is excellent as well.

In my opinion, Stillwell’s book is better to read as a way to motivate a particular topic, whereas Struik’s book really tries to illustrate the arc of mathematics through history—of course, Struik’s approach has its limits.

History can motivate otherwise inscrutable or dry mathematics in a way that would probably interest many students. Why isn’t the history of math a serious part of secondary school? I don’t think US students remember that much of whatever we do teach there anyway.

[1]: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Concise_History_of_Ma... or https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof0000dirk

That sounds like a great idea. It might help reduce the Dunning-Krueger effect which says that people who don't know what they don't know are overly confident about the knowledge they possess.

Teaching the history of math would tell the students what they don't know and would no doubt motivate many to learn more.

I had a short course on History of Philosophy in high-school which I liked but which was kind of fuzzy because that's the way philosophy is. It was hard to discern any progress or direction in the study of philosophy over the centuries.

Whereas with math, there is no fuzziness about it, except Fuzzy Logic of course.

> Why isn’t the history of math a serious part of secondary school?

Because 4 years already isn't enough time.

> I find it both scary -- how slow the truth propagates -- and humbling as well

Very true, similar to what happened to geometric algebra.