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Could you provide a couple of alternative recommendations in contrast with this? That would be very useful!



Well, it depends on what you are looking for, but the traditional-style book that I'm used to is H. B. Enderton, "A Mathematical Introduction to Logic", and Enderton also has an accompanying book on set theory. I guess I'd suggest those as a companion rather than an alternative to the Gallier and Quaintance book. The G&Q book is imho more modern and more interesting from a CS-oriented perspective. It just leaves out too many important fundamentals. Alternatively, since it is still a work in progress, maybe some of the missing stuff could be added.

Boolos and Jeffrey "Logic and Computability", whatever the current edition is, is supposed to be good, but I haven't read it yet.

The G&Q book is weird in that it is about interesting topics that I'd consider slightly advanced, but written in a way that assumes almost no background, so if it's the only thing you read, you'll still be missing important background. I'd like a book that uses the G&Q approach but that includes the background. If it kept all the current contents and was expanded, it would probably end up as 2 volumes, which is fine. Or it could leave out some of the specialized stuff, but I think that stuff is there because that was what the authors wanted to write about, so I won't judge ;-).


Can't edit to add this, so will post additional reply of an MO thread with a bunch of other recommendations. I will look into some of them myself.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/44620/undergraduate-logic...




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