The strongest feature of this book from my point of view is its conciseness. Much is presented in as short a time as possible, and because of that the book is much more readable than many others of its level. In addition to conciseness, the authors (in my edition Hoel, Port, and Stone) have made a commendable effort to present the reader with clear and concrete definitions, compact theorems (many proven), and abundant useful examples. In the back of the book nearly all of the solutions of the chapter exercises are given, unlike many books where answers to only the odd problems are given. I believe that this book is ideal for self-study, and that much use of it could also be made as a textbook for an undergraduate course in probability. The exercises are not very difficult, but they are by no means trivial, and much can be learned from them. At the end of a close study of this book the reader would be ready to enter into a program of undergraduate level mathematical statistics, or into a further study of probability with the confidence inspired by a firm understanding of the most fundamental and key concepts in probability theory.

My professor back then told us that if we want to learn probability, then do every exercise in this book. She was absolutely right. The exercises are excellent. Do them, and you will learn a lot.

This used to be *the* book on elementary calculus-based probability theory at most universities. I don't understand why it seems to have fallen out of favor. Perhaps because of its size (it is fairly compact, as it should be) and age, though I fear that it may be because it is a bit more demanding (but worth it) than many of the newer books.