I'm usually wary of reading reviews for math books since some of them say things like, "These book is fantastic, easy to read and great presentation! I just use it for casual self study. btw I have a PhD in algebraic quantum nano topology or whatever."<br><br>My background, to give you context: I did my undergrad in computer science and have competed in programming contests, so I'm fairly well-versed in discrete math and decent reasoning skills. I took multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and some statistics and discrete math, and one light topology course that I struggled with. However, I never took any of the "math major" courses in college such as abstract algebra or real/complex analysis, though I've always wanted to.<br><br>I'm reading this book now for self-study since I've always wanted to learn these other branches of math. When looking things up online, I occasionally come across terms like groups, rings, fields, homomorphisms, isomorphisms, etc. which I honestly didn't know what they meant, but these form the basic concepts of abstract algebra.<br><br>In case you're wondering what abstract algebra is all about, I'll give a short summary of how he explains it: Abstract algebra is the study of algebraic structures. What's an algebraic structure? It's a set of elements along with some operation defined on those elements. It's a very general notion that encompasses arithmetic, polynomials, matrices, and more. It's the study of the general (or abstract) properties of certain types of sets. The first half of the book is devoted to studying groups, which are the simplest sets with some sort of structure to them, then builds on top of them to explore more advanced topics. The book even goes into number theory, like prime factorization and Diophantine equations, and uses abstract algebra to show why certain geometric constructs are impossible with only a ruler and compass.<br><br>This book is most definitely doable for self-study! Here's what I found:<br><br>Pros:<br>-Very easy to follow along. He explains concepts very clearly and has the occasional diagram, and he very rarely makes claims without proving them, though sometimes he'll refer to a result from an exercise.<br>-Each chapter is surprisingly short, so it gives quite a satisfying feeling to finish a chapter that's just a few pages long. This is excluding the exercises, FYI. The base content of each chapter is enough just for the fundamentals and not much more.<br><br>Cons:<br>-The bulk of each chapter is the exercises. There's actually a lot for each chapter, so I haven't been doing them all, just eyeballing the ones that look interesting and doing those. I highly recommend doing as many as possible, however; I'm just being lazy.<br>-There aren't really any solutions for the exercises except for a handful. I've never struggled on an exercise long enough to have to look it up online. I don't know if this implies the problems are mostly easy.<br><br>Seeing as how this is the first abstract algebra book I've read and I've never done a course in it, I can't compare it to anything else, but the presentation certainly feels very logical and natural.