An Invitation to General Algebra and Universal Constructions

George M. Bergman

This text, based on course notes for the Berkeley course Math 245, "General Theory of Algebraic Structures" taught over the years, has now appeared in Springer's Universitext series, with ISBN 978-3-319-11477-4, eBook ISBN 978-3-319-11478-1, and DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-11478-1.

Here is the PDF file for the version I submitted to Springer, which has essentially the same content as the published version, but differs in pagination and some details of formatting. Here are errata and addenda that I have noted since the book appeared. And here is a revised PDF file, incorporating the above and some other less essential changes. (A small number of exercises have been dropped or added, so in the sections where that happens, the numbers associated with the last few exercises in the section have changed by 1.)

If you have any corrections or comments, you can e-mail me: .

When I teach the course, I maintain a list of answers to some questions submitted by students. I've combined the lists from Spring 2008, Fall 2011, Spring 2014, Fall 2015, and Fall 2017 in into this list, adjusting the references from questions submitted in earlier years to the published edition of the text.