This book presents modern algebra from first principles and is accessible to undergraduates or graduates. It combines standard materials and necessary algebraic manipulations with general concepts that clarify meaning and importance.
This conceptual approach to algebra starts with a description of algebraic structures by means of axioms chosen to suit the examples, for instance, axioms for groups, rings, fields, lattices, and vector spaces. This axiomatic approach--emphasized by Hilbert and developed in Germany by Noether, Artin, Van der Waerden, et al., in the 1920s--was popularized for the graduate level in the 1940s and 1950s to some degree by the authors' publication of A Survey of Modern Algebra. The present book presents the developments from that time to the first printing of this book. This third edition includes corrections made by the authors.

This book is for the honors undergraduate or introductory graduate course. Linear algebra is tightly integrated into the text.

Book Description
"Lang's Algebra changed the way graduate algebra is taught, retaining classical topics but introducing language and ways of thinking from category theory and homological algebra. It has affected all subsequent graduate-level algebra books." NOTICES OF THE AMS "The author has an impressive knack for presenting the important and interesting ideas of algebra in just the right way, and he never gets bogged down in the dry formalism which pervades some parts of algebra." MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS This book is intended as a basic text for a one-year course in algebra at the graduate level, or as a useful reference for mathematicians and professionals who use higher-level algebra. It successfully addresses the basic concepts of algebra. For the revised third edition, the author has added exercises and made numerous corrections to the text.

(From amazon.com)

Finally a self-contained, one volume, graduate-level algebra text that is readable by the average graduate student and flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of instructors and course contents. The guiding principle throughout is that the material should be presented as general as possible, consistent with good pedagogy. Therefore it stresses clarity rather than brevity and contains an extraordinarily large number of illustrative exercises.

本书主要目的是介绍代数学中的基本结构，着眼于基础数学研究的实际需求。全书既包括关于群、环、模、域等结构的标准内容，也涉及范畴和赋值理论，在恪守体系法度的同时不忘代数学和其他数学领域的交融。
本书可供具有一定基础的数学专业本科生和研究生作为辅助教材、参考书或自学读本之用。