The need for improved mathematics education at the high school and college levels has never been more apparent than in the 1990s. As early as the 1960s, I.M. Gelfand and his colleagues in the USSR thought hard about this same question and developed a style for presenting basic mathematics in a clear and simple form that engaged the curiosity and intellectual interest of thousands of school and college students. These same ideas, this development, are available in the present books to any student who is willing to read, to be stimulated, and to learn. Algebra is an elementary algebra text from one of the leading mathematicians of the world - a major contribution to the teaching of the very first high school level course in a centuries old topic - refreshed by the author's inimitable pedagogical style and deep understanding of mathematics and how it is taught and learned.