Introductory Concepts for Abstract Mathematics

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to mathematics in general (00-01) Mathematics in general (00A05) Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations (03-01)

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This textbook is divided into the following six sections (further subdivided into a total of 30 chapters): Logic and proof, sets, functions and relations, algebraic and order properties of number systems, transfinite cardinal numbers, and, axiom of choice and ordinal numbers. ``The text is designed to help students move into more abstract junior/senior mathematics classes with more confidence, knowledge, and skills and help them learn how to read and write mathematics with more clarity and ease. The book is an easy, but a good read and I would recommend it to a student who has not been exposed to essential (``abstract) mathematics yet. The text is permeated with exercises, most of them with end-of-the-book solutions, there is a short but good reading list and an index. The book is a welcome addition to a trickle of books that strive to introduce some mathematical culture to undergraduate students. While the ``mathematical culture was taken for granted in undergraduate students, in Eastern Europe of the Soviet era, attempts to introduce it into American undergraduate system are fairly new. Thankfully the change in this direction has begun and hopefully the courses of this kind would actually be moved to the very first semester of students' mathematical studies. If this effort is coupled with properly teaching algebra to high-school students, there will be no need for dubious education movements of the ``calculus reform kind.

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