Seems OUP is worse, for some reason. Wouldn’t Smullyan and Fitting’s Set Theory and the Continuum Problem have done better as a reasonably priced text? Instead, it was absurdly expensive and is now out of print and unavailable.

Another scandal, IMO, is Judith Roitman’s Introduction to Modern Set Theory which always seemed insanely expensive. Wiley’s to blame in that case.

BTW, another source of reasonably priced, books is the Springer “Lecture Notes” series.

They have some interesting early versions of some significant books:

Shelah, Proper Forcing. (£22.99 at Amazon)

Shelah, Around Classification Theory of Models (Recently available for something like £37, but now out of print.)

Devlin, Aspects of Constructibility (£27)

Devlin, The Axiom of Constructibility (£15)

The same series also has:

Horst Herrlich, The Axiom of Choice (£37)

Elisabeth Bouscaren (ed), Model Theory and Algebraic Geometry: An Introduction to E. Hrushovski’s Proof of the Geometric Mordell-Lang Conjecture (£30.39).

Thansk for the references.

Karim

Levy, Basic Set Theory
Hodges, Building Models by Games
Bell and Slomson, Models and Ultraproducts
Goldblatt, Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic
Bell, Toposes and Local Set Theories
Jech, The Axiom of Choice
Pillay, Intro to Stability Theory
Cohen, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis

I don’t know if there’s any system to it, though. It’s too bad they didn’t reply when you contacted them.

Still, they show it can be done: reasonably well-made books at a very good price.

I agree that other publishers have some very odd policies and unsatisfactory policies with classics in their back list. Dover pick up some titles. But my attempts to get into correspondence with them about some possibilities never led to anything (not even friendly responses — odd as Dover could have got a lot of well-informed advice for free).

Naturally, it is out of print, and Amazons UK and US don’t even have used copies.

Cna anything be done to encourage publishers to keep good maths / logic books in print at reasonable prices?

PS. Of course, if all we want to know is that PA proves for any of its finite subtheory that the theory is consistent there’s really no need to introduce ISigma-n at all. The Haupsatz and the existence of restricted truth predicates is all we need.

BTW, I looked up the Friendly Introduction to Mathematical Logic on Amazon and found:

UK: 5 used & new from £84.06 (!)

The new one is going for £160.64 (!!!)

US: 10 used & new from $45.96

That's better, though still expensive, but after two at 40-something, prices climb to 60-something, $77, and then are over $100. The new one is $167.29!

Now that print-on-demand is fairly common, I am puzzled as to why good books go out of print and cost so much anyway.

Re "anyway", Smullyan's book is still in print, yet at US Amazon, it is "in stock" at $189.00. (!!!)

That is despite it being a print-on-demand book, available at UK Amazon for a “mere” £37.04

Karim