From reviews of the first edition: '... a friendly book written in an engaging style ... It also contains very full, worked solutions to the exercises, which will greatly aid self-study. The introduction contains wise guidance on how to study and understand mathematics and the author's experience as a teacher comes out through her warnings of pitfalls and common errors ... it will be valued particularly by those who need to make up a deficiency in a specific topic or to remove the rust from their mathematics ... working through a few sections from Olive may be the prescription to cure the problem in many cases.' Nigel Steele, Times Higher Education Supplement