Algebra
“The idea behind teaching is to expect students to learn why things are true, rather than have them memorize ways of solving a few problems, as most of our books have done. [This] same philosophy lies behind the current text by Gelfand and Shen. There are specific ‘practical’ problems but there is much more development of the ideas … [The authors] have shown how to write a serious yet lively look at algebra.”  —The American Mathematics Monthly“Were‘Algebra’to be used solely for supplementary reading, it could be wholeheartedly recommended to any high school student of any teacher … In fact, given the long tradition of mistreating algebra as a disjointed collection of techniques in the schools, there should be some urgency in making this book compulsory reading for anyone interested in learning mathematics.”  —The Mathematical Intelligencer