The Mathematics of Nonlinear Programming (Undergraduate Text in Mathematics)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent first book on nonlinear programming.
Review: I am a graduate student, working on a PhD in Optimization (nonlinear programming). This book provides an excellent first exposure to the field of nonlinear programming. It is full of "easily visualizable" 2 or 3 dimensional examples, which greatly aid in the development of strong intuition. Although the intended level of this book is the advanced undergraduate level, it serves as a very thorough and useful companion to any graduate text. This book almost single-handedly helped me pass my qualifying exam in optimization, mostly because it "made all of the pieces fit together."

I heartily recommend it to _anyone_ interested in learning about nonlinear programming.

Rating:
Summary: Peressini and Sullivan are not enough to make you Uhl
Review: This book takes an unusual path to the usual results in optimization. Though refreshing in some ways, the standard results--Kuhn-Tucker conditions for non-convex programs--are not achieved until the last chapter. Little of the preceeding six chapters can be skipped without ruining this development! D.M. Greig, by comparison, develops this result in her first chapter, in a book at a comparable level. With Peressini et al, you sink weeks into learning restricted convex programs; an interesting niche, but one best studied once the main results are in hand.