Book excerpt: Ideal for a first course in complex analysis, this book can be used either as a classroom text or for independent study. Written at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the book is suitable for readers acquainted with advanced calculus or introductory real analysis. The treatment goes beyond the standard material of power series, Cauchy's theorem, residues, conformal mapping, and harmonic functions by including accessible discussions of intriguing topics that are uncommon in a book at this level. The flexibility afforded by the supplementary topics and applications makes the book adaptable either to a short, one-term course or to a comprehensive, full-year course. Detailed solutions of the exercises both serve as models for students and facilitate independent study. Supplementary exercises, not solved in the book, provide an additional teaching tool. This second edition has been painstakingly revised by the author's son, himself an award-winning mathematical expositor.