MAA Reviews and Read This!: An Explanation

The MAA has just launched a new online book review service, called MAA Reviews. This is a component of MathDL, the Mathematics Digital Library, which includes several other useful electronic resources related to mathematics. Regular readers of Read This! will want to understand how the two resources are related.

MAA Reviews was conceived as a bigger and better replacement for the Telegraphic Reviews that appeared for several decades in the American Mathematical Monthly. It is a searchable database of mathematics books, many of which have reviews (we're hoping to review about 50% of the books we receive). Some of the reviews are brief (comparable to what you have seen in our Briefly Noted pages) and some are full length. The site is interactive, allowing readers to submit their own reviews to the editor. In addition, the bibliography is set up to include information from the MAA's Basic Library List, a list of books recommended for purchase by undergraduate mathematics libraries.

Every review published in Read This! over the last year or so is also available in MAA Reviews, and we will gradually work to include the complete archives of Read This! on that site. But that site is much larger, including reviews of textbooks and more technical books, and of course including listings (with tables of contents) for hundreds of other books.

Beginning in 2006, reviews published in Read This! will include information about when they were uploaded to MAA Reviews. We will select for Read This! those reviews that seem to us of the widest interest among those that appeared during the last month or two. So nothing has been taken away from current readers of Read This!, but much more material is available at MAA Reviews.

MAA Reviews is available only to MAA members or to those who subscribe to the site. The older Telegraphic Reviews were available only to MAA members who subscribed to the Monthly; its replacement broadens the base to all MAA members. If you are not a member... well, you should be! See this page for a summary of some of the reasons. But, if you'd rather not be a member of MAA, you can also access MAA Reviews by paying a subscription fee.

Go to... The main Read This! page The index of all reviews The MAA Online front page MathDL MAA Reviews

Find out... About the Mathematical Association of America Why you should be a member of the MAA How you can help support the activities of the MAA

Read This! is the MAA Online book review column. Contributions are welcome; contact the editor if you'd like to be one of our reviewers. Books for review should be sent to the editor: Fernando Gouvêa, Dept. of Mathematics, Colby College, Waterville, ME 04901. Publishers, please check our reviews information page.