This book is intended as a text on abstract algebra for undergraduate students and is divided into five parts. The first part contains an informal introduction to sets, number systems, matrices, and determinants. The second part deals with groups, the third part treats rings and modules, the fourth is concerned with field theory. Much of the material in Parts II, III, IV forms the core syllabus of a course in abstract algebra. The fifth part goes on to.treat some additional optional topics often taught to undergraduates. This book presents a complete course in abstract algebra, giving lecturers flexibility in the selection of topics to be taught in individual classes. Complete proofs have been given for all theorems without glossing over significant details or leaving important theorems as exercises. In addition, the book contains many examples fully worked out and a variety of problems for practice and challenge. Solutions to the odd-numbered problems are provided at the end of the book to encourage the student in problem solving.
It's a good algebra book. I think the section on fields and galois theory is very nice. It is extremely terse and dry though. It feels like its written by a robot. Aluffi or even dummit and foote is much more conversational and thus somewhat easier to read. This makes it somewhat unenjoyable to read, but it is also quite nice since it makes the chapters short, and makes it easy to see what the essence of each chapter is.
It also has really good examples for every concept.
Some of the concepts are a little technical, especially in the "additional topics" section at the end, like the chapter of artinian and noetherian modules and artin-wedderburn theorem was quite difficult for me.
Another ++ is that it has solutions for the odd-numbered exercises.
This was the textbook for my second course in abstract algebra. We mostly did module theory in that class.
I did not like this text book then, and I found it difficult to learn the material from here. However, when relearning the material in Grad School (in a more in depth fashion.) I definitely used this book as a reference.