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Title: Verbose and poorly organized compared to similar texts.
Review: Basic Algebra is not well written. The material here is the same as covered in many other books, such as Hungerford, but Hungerford covers the material in a concise organized manner. Jacobson might be a little more accessible to beginning readers, but is more confusing as well. It hides definitions and important theorems in the middle of paragraphs. The index is horrendous. The examples are mixed in with everything else in a manner which makes it hard to pick anything apart in a chapter. Stick with another graduate Algebra text if you want to learn from the book, as it takes a good professor to make this book work. Jacobson is certainly a great Mathematician, but I do not recommend him as an author for this material.
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