No label defined (Q4947963)

The book under review is a general introduction to number theory. It is very clear in its presentation of the topics and it is well written. The requirements for reading this work are kept to a minimum making this text very useful for any person interested in this area even without having any background in abstract algebra like group theory, ring theory or field theory. The topics selected for this work are interesting. The text studies natural numbers, divisibility, arithmetic functions, congruences, quadratic residues and continued fractions. There are almost 400 exercises through the book. Several of them are novel. All the topics have many exercises that help the reader understanding the concepts treated. Definitely it is a very good book to be used as an introduction to several basic topics in number theory. There are not many texts in number theory with the characteristics of this one. Reviewer's remark: The reader should be aware that there are some misprints. The index often indicates the wrong page, for instance the primitive roots of unity are referenced in the index on page 154 but they appear on page 155. There are also some mistakes in the section of suggestions and answers. In particular the answers to the problems in Section 1.3 and numbered there as 22 to 31 in fact correspond to problems 21 to 30.