The book fulfills a definite need to provide a self-contained, one volume, graduate level algebra text that is readable by the average graduate student and flexible enough to accomodate a wide variety of instructors and course contents. The guiding philosophical principle throughout the text is that the material should be presented in the maximum usable generality consistent with good pedagogy. Therefore it is essentially self-contained, stresses clarity rather than brevity and contains an unusually large number of illustrative exercises. The book covers major areas of modern algebra, which is a necessity for most mathematics students in sufficient breadth and depth.