Dear categorists, this is to announce the availability of my book Joachim Kock Frobenius algebras and 2D topological quantum field theories LMSST 59, Cambridge (see http://books.cambridge.org/0521832675.htm). It's a rather long account of the 'folk theorem' that 2D topological quantum field theories are the same thing as commutative Frobenius algebras, as well as the more general fact that the category of oriented 2D cobordisms is (equivalent to) the free symmetric monoidal category on a commutative Frobenius object. The novelty is mostly the idea of explaining all this to undergraduates, using it as an 'excuse' for doing category theory. In fact, the book can as well be seen as an introduction to monoidal categories and categorical viewpoints, and aims also at giving the young reader an impression of unity in mathematics, with a very close interplay between algebra and topology. For the expert readership of this mailing list, perhaps the amount of details presented in the book will be boring at times, but in any case I think you will enjoy the more than 200 figures, before passing on the book to your students... Cheers, Joachim. --------------------------------------------------------------- Joachim Kock <kock@math.uqam.ca> Département de mathématiques -- Université du Québec à Montréal Case postale 8888, succursale centre-ville Montréal (Québec), H3C 3P8 -- Canada ---------------------------------------------------------------