Based on what you wrote you would hate Courant and Robbins What is Mathematics?, too rigorous. I think you would enjoy Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers by

Based on what you wrote you would hate Courant and Robbins What is Mathematics?, too rigorous. I think you would enjoy Mathematics from the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg and Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus Thompson. You might also find Unknown Quantity interesting. I think Gullberg would be my #1 req for you.