A Primer of Algebraic Geometry (Q4937951)

In the preface the authors state their intention of presenting ``an approach that is as constructive as possible, focusing on effective calculations where it is possible. However, we did not want to give priority to developing algorithms over proving theorems. Therefore we do not provide algorithms written in pseudo-code, but we do make the theory as `effective' as possible by a consistent use of Gröbner basis techniques''. Despite these admirable intentions, the book is a fairly conventional introduction to algebraic geometry. The first three chapters cover the usual introductory material of affine and projective geometry, e.g the Nullstellensatz and the correspondences between ideals and their varieties. The fourth chapter introduces Gröbner bases. The final section of this chapter gives, sometimes rather sketchily, applications of previous chapters, such as determining the equations of a projective closure, and recognizing invertibility of polynomial mappings. Chapter five is dimension theory. Most of the material in these chapters is covered more extensively by \textit{D. Cox, J. Little} and \textit{D. O'Shea} [``Ideals, varieties and algorithms. An introduction to computational algebraic geometry and commutative algebra'', 2nd edition (1996; Zbl 0861.13012)]. The following chapters are: Introduction to local theory. -- Curves. -- Elliptic curves. Gröbner bases do not reappear in these chapters. There are a couple of appendices: Finiteness conditions and field extensions. -- Localization, discrete valuation rings, and Dedekind domains. The book would have benefited by many more exercises, particularly on topics related to its constructive theme.