Textbook (Hardcover - Fourth Edition)
Textbook Information
This is the definitive presentation of the history, development and philosophical significance of non-Euclidean geometry as well as of the rigorous foundations for it and for elementary Euclidean geometry, essentially according to Hilbert. Appropriate for liberal arts students, prospective high school teachers, math. majors, and even bright high school students. The first eight chapters are mostly accessible to any educated reader; the last two chapters and the two appendices contain more advanced material, such as the classification of motions, hyperbolic trigonometry, hyperbolic constructions, classification of Hilbert planes and an introduction to Riemannian geometry.
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
May 20, 2008: Unlike most of the new editions of textbooks, this fourth edition is significantly different from the third. With nearly 200 additional pages, Greenberg fleshes out the fascinating area of non-Euclidean geometry even more than in the third edition. There are additional sections in the following areas: *) Straightedge-and-compass constructions *) Descartes? analytic geometry and the broader idea of constructions *) Briefly on the number pi *) Brief history of real projective geometry *) Equidistance *) The defect *) Angle sums (again) *) Beltrami?s interpretation *) Bolyai?s constructions in the hyperbolic plane There is also now a short conclusion at the end of each chapter there are a few more exercises. This edition retains the quality of the previous one and would be my choice for a textbook if I were to have the opportunity to teach a course in non-Euclidean geometry.