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The MAA Reviews and Basic Library List (BLL) Editorial Board manages the content for MAA Reviews, which features book reviews and maintains the Basic Library List, a collection of essential mathematics resources for community college, college, and university libraries.

About

MAA Reviews serves as a comprehensive resource for information on mathematics books, providing details on recent publications, top recommendations, and suggested acquisitions for libraries.

Publishing eight reviews of mathematics-related books bi-monthly, MAA Reviews now hosts several thousand reviews along with listings of thousands of other books. This extensive database offers a wealth of information for those interested in mathematics literature.

Each book entry includes publication details, a cover image, and, when available, the table of contents, ensuring that users have access to thorough and useful information.

Review Copies

Publishers should send review copies to the following address.

MAA Service Center
ATTN: Gazzet Byrd
9050 Junction Drive
Annapolis Junction, MD 20701

Contact the Editor

MAA Reviews belongs to the members of MAA, and so we hope you will be willing to help out! Please send the following items to the attention of the Editor.

  • Point out mistakes. As we enter data and reviews for thousands of books, we're bound to get some things wrong. If so, please let us know! If it's a matter of opinion (e.g., is it a textbook or a monograph?), we'll talk it over. We particularly want you to point out books with inappropriate topics, broken links other html errors, and spelling errors.
  • Become a reviewer. Contact the associate editors for your area(s) of interest.  Our shelf is always full of books waiting for reviewers.
  • Suggest books. We can only review the books we get. If there's something we've missed, let us know. Or even better, contact the publisher and tell them to send us a copy!

MAA Reviews wants to serve you all. Feel free to pitch in. Most of all, we hope you'll visit the site, read and enjoy the reviews, and spread the word.

Book Categories

We started with only two of these: “textbooks” and everything else. But then it became clear that we should have a few more. So here is a rough guide to the types of books we review.

  • Anthology: a collection of papers by several different authors. See also “Festschrift” and “Proceedings”.
  • Collection: a collection of papers by one author.
  • Dictionary: anything that has entries and definitions.
  • Festschrift: an anthology put together in honor of someone.
  • General: anything that doesn’t fit anywhere else, but especially “trade books” aimed at the general public.
  • Handbook: an overview of some topic intended as a “ready reference.”
  • Manual: in our usage, restricted to a software manual.
  • Monograph: a book whose main goal is to explain a specific subject.
  • Problem Book: a collection of problems.
  • Proceedings: an anthology connected to a conference or meeting.
  • Report: an official report from some entity.
  • Sourcebook: a collection of (usually historical) source material.
  • Student Helps: a book meant to supplement textbooks.
  • Textbook: a book intended for course adoption.

At the graduate level, the difference between a textbook and a monograph becomes very tenuous. Our decisions there have been somewhat arbitrary.

Basic Library List (BLL)

The site also hosts the MAA’s recommendations for library acquisition. Whenever you open the page for a book that has been recommended for libraries to purchase by the MAA Reviews and Basic Library List editorial board, you will see a note telling you that and indicating the strength of their recommendation, from BLL to BLL***.

Editorial Board

Tricia Brown, Georgia Southern University (tmbrown@georgiasouthern.edu
Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Game Theory, Math for the General Public, Recreational Math, Fiction, and Generally Hard to Classify

Dan Curtin, Northern Kentucky University (danieljcurtin42@gmail.com)
History of Mathematics, History of Science, Biography, Memoir, Collected Papers

John Ross, Southwestern University (rossjo@southwestern.edu)
Analysis

Bill Satzer, retired from 3M (bsatzer@gmail.com)  
Differential Equations, Calculus of Variations, Dynamical Systems, Ergodic Theory, Control Theory, Numerical Analysis

Contact the Editor at maareviews@maa.org.

For all other areas, contact MAA Publications (publications@maa.org). 

We need associate editors to cover probability, statistics, and mathematical physics. If you are interested in becoming an associate editor, contact Carol Baxter (maareviews@maa.org).