Review by Choice Review
A rather idiosyncratic work whose purpose, besides that of presentation of mathematics, is to give some background to the theorems. There are historical remarks associated with many of the topics discussed, quotations from original works, and biographical sketches; and the bibliography contains references to the classics in the field, with some annotations. The mathematical focus is on the ramifications of the Cauchy integral theorem, and thus there is, for example, considerably more material on meromorphic functions here than in the recent text by Bruce P. Palka, An Introduction to Complex Function Theory (CH, Jun'91), although there is little or no discussion of conformal mapping. The tone of the discussion is far higher than that of a standard undergraduate text such as R.V. Churchill and J.W. Brown's Complex Variables and Applications (5th ed. 1990), and the emphasis is sharper than in L.V. Ahlfors's graduate-level text Complex Analysis (3rd ed, 1979). Not essential for undergraduate libraries. -D. Robbins, Trinity College (CT)
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
