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orthonormal comments on Open Thread, April 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Have you ever tried to read a math textbook that cherishes being short and concise? They're nigh unreadable unless you already know everything in them.
When you're discussing simple concepts that people have an intuitive grasp of, then brevity is better. When there's an inferential distance involved, not so much.
Tried Mathematics 1001? Only $16.13 at Amazon.
I think that illustrates the point actually; the topics in that book either do not have much of an inferential distance or as the description you link to says "The more advanced topics are covered in a sketchy way". Serge Lang's Algebra on the other hand...
Funny, Serge Lang's Algebra was one of my mental examples. (Also see: anything written by Lars Hörmander.)
That's not entirely true -- Melrose's book on Geometric Scattering Theory, Serre's book on Lie Groups and Algebras, Spivak's book on Calculus on Manifolds, and so on.
I think the phenomena you're pointing to is closer to the observation that the traits that make one a good mathematician are mostly orthogonal to the traits that make one a good writer.