Reinhard Diestel
Graph Theory (3rd ed'n)
Review by Michael Berg, for The Mathematical Association of
America
Graph theory is one of those subjects I wish I knew a lot about, but
don't. In my undergraduate days I was at best a
fellow traveler alongside bona fide combinatorists, Ramsey theorists,
and graph theorists, but I was never a true
apprentice of any one of them (number fields exerted too strong a
pull). However, frequent exposure did have its effects
and I came to understand that there are a host of beautiful results in
graph theory, often remarkably easy to state and
even illustrate, but ever so difficult to prove.
Graph theory shares this property also with combinatorics as well as
with elementary number theory and it has a lot of
overlap with these fields, of course - so much so that it is sometimes
difficult to say where one discipline ends and the
other begins. Admittedly, drawing such borders is perhaps a synthetic
and misguided exercise, but one does want to
know the scope of one's subject. Graph
Theory aims to answer this question at least at the level of a
beginner in the
field: there is a well-defined core of material every self-respecting
graph theorist should know, and a useful graduate-level
textbook goes a bit further by introducing what should (or might) loom
on the horizon as research in the field progresses.
In fact, in the Preface to the book, Reinhard Diestel poses the
explicit question: "what are, today, the essential areas,
methods and results that should form the centre of an introductory
graph theory course aiming to equip its audience for
the most likely developments ahead?," and the book's table of contents
delineates his answer: matching, covering and
packing, connectivity, planar graphs, coloring graphs, flows, extremal
graphs, infinite graphs, Ramsey theory for graphs
(straddling two areas and erasing part of a border?), Hamilton cycles,
random graphs, and, finally, minors, trees and
well-quasi-ordering (how's that for peaking the interest of a nosy
would-be reader?). So there it is: if you want to be a
graph theorist, learn all this stuff well - and, to be sure, this is a
superb place to learn it.
Graph Theory is a very
well-written book, now in its third edition and the recipient of the
according evolutionary
benefits. It succeeds dramatically in its aims, which Diestel gives as
"[providing] a reliable first introduction to graph
theory that can be used for personal study or as a course text, [and] a
graduate text that offers some depth in selected
areas." The margins are filled with cryptic but useful references and
indicators of appearances of important players (still
leaving more than enough room for the enthusiastic reader to do battle
with the text with his own marginalia); the
theorems are presented elegantly and concisely (often replete with
attribution: Erdos' name abounds, of course), as are
their proofs; there are many exercises, with good hints; and the
chapters' end notes are a model of scholarship and a pleasure to read.
Even the pictures and drawings are nice. This is a hell of a good book!
Unlike, say, algebraic geometry, graph theory is one of those
rnarvelous disciplines which are very beautiful and serious
but at the same time get off the ground very quickly. An able and
energetic fledgling would be safely pointed in this
direction, and should be given this book as standard issue.
Michael Berg is Professor of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University
in California.
MAA Review
List of reviews
Return to home page