# Tag Archives: book review

## Book review: Richard Fortey's "Life"

As far as the telling of history goes, there can be little more ambitious than the entire history of life from the dawn of the Precambrian to the present day. That is just what paleontologist Richard Fortey attempts in his book Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth […]

## Book review: Dunn's "The Wild Life of Our Bodies"

For the past few years, I have been increasingly aware of the unusual aspects of modern society with regard to technological and cultural development. Compared to thousands of years ago, these developments have led to vast changes in the food we eat and how we spend our time. More of our lives are indoors, away […]

## Forthcoming book review: Algorithms by Louridas

An algorithm is a set of well-defined instructions for data transformation. An algorithm typically is given input, and then gives some sort of output. It is the computing version of a function in mathematics. Examples of algorithms range from the very simple such as long division or multiplication that we are taught in grade school […]

## Book Review: deMeyer and Ingraham's "Separable Algebras over Commutative Rings"

Let $R$ be a commutative ring. We say that an $R$-algebra $A$ is separable if it is projective as an $A\otimes_R A^{\rm op}$-module. Examples include full matrix rings over $R$, finite separable field extensions, and $\Z[\tfrac 12,i]$ as a $\Z[\tfrac 12]$-algebra. The 1970 classic Separable Algebras by deMeyer and Ingraham acquaints the reader with this […]

## Book Review: Kaplansky's "Commutative Rings"

It was more than a year ago that I opened a package that I got in the mail, taking out this green ex-library hardcover in excellent condition. Now, I honestly can't remember what prompted me to order it (perhaps it was the author's name), but I remember reading the first few sections and feeling that […]

## Book Review: Weibel's "An Introduction to Homological Algebra"

Let us recall some classic words: Our subject starts with homology, homomorphisms, and tensors. Saunders Mac Lane, in "Homology" And while Mac Lane's "Homology" and its friend by Cartan and Eilenberg are certainly fairly comprehensive sources of homological algebra, viewpoint shifts in the subject have made more recent approaches desirable. Weibel's 'An Introduction to Homological […]