本书的诞生还是半个世纪之前的事情，但是，深贯其中的严谨的学术风范以及针对不同时代所做出的切实改进使得它愈久弥新，成为复分析领域历经考验的一本经典教材。本书作者在数学分析领域声乐卓著，多次荣获国际大次，这也是本书始终保持旺盛的生命力的原因之一。本书适合用做数学专业本科高年级学生及研究生教材。

A standard source of information of functions of one complex variable, this text has retained its wide popularity in this field by being consistently rigorous without becoming needlessly concerned with advanced or overspecialized material. Difficult points have been clarified, the book has been reviewed for accuracy, and notations and terminology have been modernized. Chapter 2, Complex Functions, features a brief section on the change of length and area under conformal mapping, and much of Chapter 8, Global-Analytic Functions, has been rewritten in order to introduce readers to the terminology of germs and sheaves while still emphasizing that classical concepts are the backbone of the theory. Chapter 4, Complex Integration, now includes a new and simpler proof of the general form of Cauchy's theorem. There is a short section on the Riemann zeta function, showing the use of residues in a more exciting situation than in the computation of definite integrals.

近世代数是代数学一个基础学科，讲述代数基本结构的特性，本书除系统介绍群、环和域的基础知识（包括域的有限伽罗瓦扩张理论）之外，还力图强调近世代数中的思想和方法，书中有大量习题，除主线内容之外，还增加一些附录用来开拓和深化所学内容。
本书在中国科学技术大学讲授多年的讲义基础上修改写成，可作为高等学校数学系基础课教材，也可供数学工作者和通信、计算机科学等领域的工程技术人员参考。