Abstract Algebra

The title of the review pretty much says it all. For a first edition, this isn't bad. I've taken copious notes from this book, and I've learned quite a bit. It's much more comprehensive than most other algebra books on the market, to be sure. I'd be hard pressed to find another introductory algebra book that actually makes it to the Adjoint Functor theorem, tripleability, and Birkhoff's characterization of varieties. However, the book also has its flaws. The most annoying one is probably Lemma 10.6.8 on page 331, which says that a finite dimensional division algebra over an algebraically closed field has dimension 1. This is clearly false. (Consider the quaternions and the complex numbers). The error in the proof is that he assumes commutativity (probably the easiest blunder to make in algebra, so it's a minor offense).Thankfully, no subsequent use of this "lemma" is made in the book (making me wonder why he's choosing to call it a lemma). In some places, Grillet doesn't really have the slickest proof on the market, which would be nice if he's trying to be comprehensive (the book wouldn't be quite as much of a wrist cracker). For instance Jacobson's proof of the simplicity of PSL is much slicker and isolates the hypotheses (dim V >2 or |K|>3) The chapter dependency chart is useful, although he breaks the logic somewhat by using fields in the chapter on group theory.Chapter notes at the end of each chapter would be very useful. All of these problems can be easily fixed in a second edition. Another idea would be for the author to maintain some sort of errata page (John Lee does this for his books on manifolds). For the most part, the book has great potential because it's got a nice, ambitious logical structure that you won't find elsewhere. I'd rather see someone go out on a limb and try to write a comprehensive, up to date, state of the art algebra book than simply rewrite an existing book focusing only on classical algebra. For professors who are thinking of using this book for their algebra classes, I'd suggest going through it yourself before the term starts (give yourself a few months) so that you can tweak it a little. That way if you use the book for you class you can catch any mistakes.