Approximation Algorithms Book

Let's be concrete.

The first part of the book presents a set of classical NP hard problems, set covering, bin packing, knapsack, etc. and their approximation algorithms. These algorithms are extracted from a number of fundamental papers, which are of long, delicate presentations. Vazirami presented the problems and solutions in a unified framework. The presentation appears much shorter than they were in the original papers, and they are concise, precise, explicit and comprehensive. For an algorithm researcher, if he read the book first and then those papers, he will be much more efficient than doing that other way (as I and many other people did.)

The second part of the book present the LP scheme of approximation algorithm design. I had little knowledge about this. But to pursue a career as an algorithm researcher, I must know this. Vazirani's book gives me a comprehensive (yet short) start.

I rarely give my reviews five stars (2% of my reviews get 5 stars so far), but this book deserves.