Elements of Abstract Algebra (Dover Books on Mathematics)

book as described shipped promptly

I have a real fondness for this book. I worked through all the problems in the summer before grad school, which was a long time ago now. After many pleasant hours in sunny parks and cafes, I finished with an understanding and appreciation I had not gotten from the usual undergraduate texts. Recently I bought another paperback copy as a gift for a young relative, hoping she has a similarly positive experience.Since Mr. Clark posts and reads comments on Amazon, I wanted to say "Thank you."

This text takes a wonderful problem solving approach, but the text explains rather little in and of itself, largely requiring you to figure it out yourself by doing the problems. Optimally, one would take a standard text (e.g. Herstein, Dummit and Foote) that develops the theory and the like itself, providing examples of what good proofs look like, revealing tricky properties and theorems, etc., and use that as reading with this as a source of problems.If it had more actual explanation and the like I would give it 5 stars, as it is a seemingly ideal text otherwise. But, the terseness and lack of actual writing on the subject will lead some students astray.

I am very happy with this book. Allan Clark has an excellent choice of topics and it's well organized. I am *not* saying this just because he was one of my professors back in our dark ages at Purdue, although that's how I learned about it.

Excellent Text and reference book. I especially liked the treatment of sets and permutations; it leads directly to encryption.CAB

Excellent book! Very suitable for begginers, it has the essential core of what Abstract Algebra is about.

Sure，is the best algebra book i ever read。

I like these types of books because it's more of a prove it yourself type of approach. This pedagogy is more effective than the standard approach we're used to and is more beneficial to any aspiring mathematician. I used this as extra practice for my Farleigh text, we used at the university. I personally prefer this dense introduction to the wordy Farleigh.