Foundations of Analysis (Ams Chelsea Publishing, 79)

Certainly no clearer treatment of the foundations of the number system can be offered … one can only be thankful to the author for this fundamental piece of exposition, which is alive with his vitality and genius. ―American Mathematical Monthly Why does $2 times 2 = 4$? What are fractions? Imaginary numbers? Why do the laws of algebra hold? And how do we prove these laws? What are the properties of the numbers on which the Differential and Integral Calculus is based? In other words, what are numbers? And why do they have the properties we attribute to them? Thanks to the genius of Dedekind, Cantor, Peano, Frege, and Russell, such questions can now be given a satisfactory answer. This English translation of Landau's famous Grundlagen der Analysis answers these important questions.