Algebra (Graduate Texts in Mathematics) (v. 73) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been acquainted with several introductory graduate algebra
books over the years, and prefer this one for its coverage of all the fundamental areas (groups, modules, rings, linear algebra, fields, and category theory), being concise, and providing great care when outlining each proof.
If one compare's the amount of material in this book to Jacobson's "Basic Algebra Vol 1", Grove's "Algebra", or Herstein's "Abstract Algebra", Hungerford's book gets the nod.
Moreover, I much more prefer the concise definition, example, theorem, proof format over the more colloquial approach, as can be found in Jacobson's text. For me at least, the payoff for reading an algebra text is the beauty found in the logic and reasoning from which very profound results arise from the complex interaction and use of more straightforward ones. And this is exactly where Hungerford's book shines through in tremendous glory. When outlining a proof he does an outstanding job in citating the results from previous Chapters that are used. For me this is the strength of algebra (In geometry I cringe when I get a picture for proof, and in analysis it is often quite complicated to verify that a given situation possesses the appropriate conditions needed to invoke some famous lemma or theorem).
One last good word about this book: I found the exercises both in abundance (after each section) and quite reasonable for a first year grad. student. Happy reading.

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Finally a self-contained, one volume, graduate-level algebra text that is readable by the average graduate student and flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of instructors and course contents. The guiding principle throughout is that the material should be presented as general as possible, consistent with good pedagogy. Therefore it stresses clarity rather than brevity and contains an extraordinarily large number of illustrative exercises.

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