This book is excellent. The material is presented clearly and concisely. It makes the subject matter accessible and interesting. I used it as the text for a one-semester graduate subject. I completed all of the exercises, so it is well-paced for this kind of study. I started with only an introductory knowledge of group theory, so it is self-contained. The only drawback is that there are no solutions to any of the exercises. If it had this, it would be a perfect bok.

This book has 4 chapters.Chapter1 is about general theory of representations of finite group.Chapter2 is about representation of symmetric groups.chapter3 and 4 are about combinatorial topics and symmetric functions. Though I haven't read all of the book,I highly recommand this book because this book shows us introductive part of representation theory with easy words.I think it is worth to read for all who are to begin the study of representation theory.

Quite well researched with some interesting facts. However it is rather old fashioned psychology - the beginning of political correctness is evident and it spoils the book. It would be nice to see an updated version without the cultural relativism.

Lucidly written and packed with useful factual information, Eli Sagan's "Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form" is an attempt to examine institutionalised aggression from a psychoanalytic perspective. Drawing on Freud and anthropological research of "organic" or primitive societies, Sagan identifies cannibalism as the most elementary form of aggression, the result of aggressive drives which are repressed and not given adequate expression. As a corollary, Sagan argues that these self-same aggressive drives have been sublimated in modern civilised society, albeit in the institutionalised forms of racism, capitalist competition, imperialism and slavery. It is evident that the author's political views are left-wing liberalist, recommending the release of eros (the libidinal energy of love) in the hope of realising a more tolerant and progressive society and seeking newer forms of sublimating aggressive drives. But this does not cloud the issue. The book remains an objective, direct and clear study throughout, written without obfuscation or needless ornament.

Eli Sagan tries to explain the transition from primitive societies to states. He notes that there is not likely to be a purely economic explanation for this transition, forager society was remarkably economically efficient. In other words, "primitives" were not driven by hunger or disease to invent agriculture and the state. So why did they do it? Sagan appeals to the theories of Margaret Mahler, a psychoanalyst who theorized about psychological development in small children. Mahler never meant for her theories to be applied to society as a whole, but it is one of Sagan's assumptions that social structure and development will never be fully understood without looking into the psychic drives which humans either act upon or repress. Sagan speculates that there is a drive toward individuation and separation from the mother, a drive which is repressed in kinship societies with their emphasis on family connections over individuality. Early states attempted to satisfy this drive with a vengeance. Their method was the creation of the tyrant, a colorful, heroic individual who tries to defy death and the family as a way of symbolically separating from the mother. Sagan even notes that tyrants were expected to throw tantrums, something people do when they want to show their mothers that they are their own people. Sagan's empirical data are largely from what he calls "complex societies," i.e., pre-literate states, such as the Buganda of what is today Uganda, and pre-Europeanized Polynesian societies. This is the best aspect of the book. The glimpses into these cultures are vivid and fascinating. They also provide blood-chilling examples of early tyranny: human sacrifice, for example, marked virtually every major occasion of the monarch's life: birth, circumcision, and death. Sagan explains that this aggression, like all aggression, is an attempt to reduce anxiety -- in this case the separation anxiety of ending the kinship system and hence severing from the family. I can't say that I am much convinced by Sagan's case. He himself has to admit that he cannot explain why some primitive societies make the step into statehood while others don't. After all, all people have the same inner drive to individuate. Furthermore, he has not convincingly explained why forager society, a condition for which the human psyche is obviously an adapatation, would be so hostile to innate human drives. It is a paradoxical suggestion. Also, I don't think that Sagan considers forager society in sufficient depth. When he talks about the "primitive" it is usually kinship systems that he has in mind, but most of human existence was in gatherer-hunter bands, not kinship systems. It is crucial to his case that he show that pre-state societies repressed individuality. In the case of foragers especially, I don't think he has really shown this at all. Finally, I can't agree with Sagan's claim that all aggression is motivated by anxiety. The most hideously aggressive people are psychopaths, and most psychologists who have studied them would agree that they exhibit a strange lack of anxiety. However, perhaps Sagan has unnecessarily overstated the point about anxiety. Perhaps it would be enough to say that some kinds of aggression are usually motivated by anxiety.