His dislike of authority gives A History of Pi a style that belies its dry title.

For example, his chapter on the era following the classical age of ancient Greece is titled "The Roman Pest";[2] he calls the Catholic Inquisition the act of "insane religious fanatic"; and he says that people who question public spending on scientific research are "intellectual cripples who drivel about 'too much technology' because technology has wounded them with the ultimate insult: 'They can't understand it any more.'"

Beckmann was a prolific scientific author who wrote several electrical engineering textbooks and non-technical works, founded Golem Press, which published most of his books, and published his own monthly newsletter, Access to Energy.

In his self-published book Einstein Plus Two and in Internet flame wars, he claimed that the theory of relativity is incorrect.

A second edition, printed in 1971, added material on the calculation of π by electronic computers, but still contained historical and mathematical errors, such as an incorrect proof that there exist infinitely many prime numbers.