Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats (Dover Books on Mathematics)

This up-to-date introductory treatment employs the language of category theory to explore the theory of structures. Its unique approach stresses concrete categories, and each categorical notion features several examples that clearly illustrate specific and general cases.
A systematic view of factorization structures, this volume contains seven chapters. The first five focus on basic theory, and the final two explore more recent research results in the realm of concrete categories, cartesian closed categories, and quasitopoi. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, it requires an elementary knowledge of set theory and can be used as a reference as well as a text. Updated by the authors in 2004, it offers a unifying perspective on earlier work and summarizes recent developments.