Elementary Topology

Rating:
Summary: I don't like this book
Review: We used this book for the first undergraduate topology course at my university. Perhaps the book is okay if you know what to expect from it before you buy it. What this book IS NOT is a book on General Topology. What this book IS is a book on the topology of the real number system. It's odd, because the course I took is one on general topology, where the topology of the real number system was mentioned as a mere footnote, yet this book covers very little general topology. At the end of each chapter, there is a starred section, in which about 1 page is devoted to how these concepts apply to general topology. So if that's what you want, perhaps you'll like this book. But that's not the only reason I didn't like it.

This book states EVERYTHING as a proposition. It gets ridiculous, there's so many propositions. In one section of one chapter I counted almost 40 propositions once. Unbelievable. Many results are not proved, which leaves alot to be desired in that department, and alot of the exercises are "give an example of...". These types of problems are great, but all in all there just isn't enough variety in this book for me.

So, if you're looking for a book on General Topology this definitely is not the one you want. If you're looking for a book on Topology of Rn, then I'd say you can consider this book rated 3.5 stars, and you can make your decision based on that.

However, if that's really all you want, you can find the same results in any modern analysis book such as Baby Rudin (i.e. Principles of Mathematical Analysis), and for general topology the book(s) to go to are Munkres' Topology, and Kelley's General Topology.