There was an earier review that claimed this book is for "people who like to count." That's a little silly. This book is a rigorous math text. And it's glorious. It's probably my favorite text. But it's not light reading at all.

I spent a semester actively reading and working on this book with my advisor. I read this book and worked on research, 50/50 split on my time. I got through 2.5 of the 4 chapters, and I'm damn proud of myself. It's a great book, but if you didn't know that 'enumerative' was for "people who like to count", you probably want a different text.

This book is a must for anyone who likes how to count. In addition to the superb exposition of deep and important mathematics, it contains so many intriguing problems, some of them even puzzle-like. Read this book cover-to-cover or open it at a random page. Either way you would love it!

This volume contains expository introductions to some of the most exciting research areas in algebraic combinatorics. Although most of the articles began life as a lecture at MSRI, the authors have done much more than publish transcripts of their talks; they have produced carefully written articles that contain much information that they could not present during the severe time constraints of the original combinatorics seminar. Anyone interested in entering one of the fields touched upon in this volume would be hard-pressed to find a better way to get started than to study the relevant article in this book.

Since the articles were written there have of course been advances; I will just mention that a number of Jim Propp's matchings problems have been solved, and that Mark Haiman has proved the n! conjecture.

Contents: Matroid bundles (L. Anderson); Combinatorial representation theory (H. Barcelo, A. Ram); An algorithmic theory of lattice points in polyhedra (A. Barvinok, J. E. Pommersheim); Some algebraic properties of the Schechtman-Varchenko bilinear forms (G. Denham, P. Hanlon); Combinatorial differential topology and geometry (R. Forman); Macdonald polynomials and geometry (M. Haiman); Enumeration of matchings: problems and progress (J. Propp); The generalized Baues problem (V. Reiner); Littlewoord-Richardson semigroups (A. Zelevinsky).

This is an excellent reference. Its best feature is that all ( or most ) chemical synonyms. including tradenames, for a specific substance are listed alphabetically. This usually lets you find a substance in one attempt.

I dont read this book yet!

Stanley's "green book" is an overview of a new aspect in commutative algebra:its links with combinatorics.Stanley,as one of the pionners on the subject,is the right one to give us this compendius.But,unfortunally,its hard to beguiners.