The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences | 
This is exactly what's missing from textbooks. Oh yeah, you get little blurbs about Descartes and Pascal but this is the whole story. We enforce the study of the corpus without any recognition that mathematics is an epic human achievement.
It gets pretty advanced. What we teach in high school was understood by the 18th century so maybe half the book is kinda wasted.
A good read if your mathematically inclined. Indespensible if you teach the stuff.
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