TITLE: Can the Bourbaki series be used profitably by undergraduates?
QUESTION [33 upvotes]: Can the Bourbaki series be used profitably by undergraduates and high school students?Are we the target audience? I came across the N.Bourbaki texts while surfing the internet(I have not had the opportunity to access them though) and was a bit amazed by the Wikipedia article suggesting they did mathematics very rigorously.

REPLY [6 votes]: Just to make things clear, I love Bourbaki.
However... These books are not made to teach, they aim rather at generality and exhaustivity. And they succeed very well I think. Some volumes are getting old fashioned, like Théorie des ensembles, or Intégration. Algèbre and Algèbre commutative are just great, I often need a generality I can only find there.
Concerning the rigor, they are rigorous in the narrow meaning of the term : they will always prefer generality and precision rather than readability and ease of use. But in the other hand, the logical frame is clear, references are precise, you know where are the definition, you know what they mean, always. They are rigorist.
With Bourbaki, all starts from the beginning. You might think that you can learn all math simply reading Bourbaki, but that just wrong. And they know that very well.
In the end, if your question is really “are you the target audience ?”, the answer is no. If the question is “is it interesting for me ?”, then you should read it, and you will see. Bourbaki is one of the most influential mathematician (fictional, but still) of the 20th century, and also one of the most controversial (is formalism a dead end ?), you should know what is it like, what is his philosophy, and have your opinion on it.
My advice is to read first the introduction of Théorie des ensembles which explains the general philosophy, and then read the volume about the field you know the best.