
Ask HN: Recommendations for a good elementary text on Number Theory - ColinWright
A friend is looking for a good elementary text on Number Theory. Recommendations would be most welcome, along with comments about approach, style, coverage, and anything else you&#x27;d care to say.<p>He has already read &quot;Very Short Introduction&quot; by Peter Higgins.<p>Many thanks in advance.
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cevi
LeVeque's book "Fundamentals of Number Theory" is decent - it covers the
basics (sometimes goes a bit beyond the basics), does some elementary ring
theory, has exercises, and has a little bit of historical trivia.

Andrews has a book titled just "Number Theory" which is very combinatorial
(gives a combinatorial proof of Fermat's little theorem) - the second half of
the book is about partitions and their generating functions.

Borevich and Shafarevich have a book also titled just "Number Theory" which is
an introductory text on algebraic number theory, ideal class groups, etc., and
by the end it uses these techniques to explain how Kummer proved Fermat's Last
Theorem for exponents below 100.

Baker's "A concise introduction to the Theory of Numbers" is exactly what it
says on the tin. It has five to ten exercises per chapter, and each chapter is
a fairly short introduction to a different branch of number theory, giving
examples of the fundamental techniques or ideas or results in that area.

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allthatglitters
A recent acquisition has (so far) been very approachable - a recommendation I
got from a blog post that I can't recall.. "A Brief History of Numbers" by Leo
Corry, Oxford University Press 2015. A fairly rigorous presentation from a
strongly historical perspective. Excellent for this math hobbyist.

