"In scope and choice of subject matter," declared the Bulletin of the American Mathematics Society, "this text is nicely calculated to suit the needs of introductory classes in real variable theory." A balanced treatment, it covers all of the fundamentals, from the real number system and point sets to set theory and metric spaces.

Starting with a brief exposition of the ideas and methods of deductive logic, the text proceeds to the postulates of Peano for the natural numbers and outlines a method for constructing the real number system. Subsequent chapters explore functions and their limits, the properties of continuous functions, fundamental theorems on differentiation, the Riemann integral, and uniform convergence. Additional topics include ordinary differential equations, the Lebesgue and Stieltjes integrals, and transfinite numbers. Useful, well-chosen lists of references to the literature conclude each chapter.