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Review title: A classic of math logic, sans philosophy
Product review: This book is a bit of an elegy to a dying world: the math logic of the 20th century.It does not cover any nonclassical or philosophical logic, directions heavily researched in recent decades. Algebraic logic is slighted, even though Mendelson was an authority on Boolean algebra. Nor does he do justice to the model theoretic perspective, although the treatment of the Tarski semantics for first order logic in chpt. 2 is a bit of a classic. The treatment of recursion in chpts. 3 and 5 are thorough. The set theory of chpt. 4 is a bit unconventional (NBG rather than ZF) but is well exposited. My overall complaint is the crabbed notation, altho he's come a long way since the first edition. The book also cries out for a more graceful English style and page layout. Here Machover (1996) stands out.Mendelson's bibliography is wonderfully long and rich. Finally, this text contains perhaps the gentlest extant introduction to second order logic.
