The only great book that Bourbaki ever wrote?

Google found this:
Notices of the AMS, September 1998, p. 979:
Bill Casselman's review of POLYHEDRA by Cromwell,
we find the phrase "the one great book by Bourbaki"


I've heard this sentence (almost literally, if I remember correctly) in 1980 from Vladimir Drinfeld. He added: his other books you buy and put on the shelf. This one you can really use.

Remark. But other people had different opinions. Some use Topological vector spaces. I used Functions of the real variable and Integration.


In a similar vein, Godement wrote in (1982, p. 6.28; translation):

... the previous lemma, which we have taken from N. Bourbaki, Lie Groups and Lie Algebras, chap. III, (the most unreadable presentation of the theory of Lie groups ever published since Sophus Lie, but fortunately the chapters on semisimple Lie groups and algebras make up for this)

Also Borel (1998):

A good example is provided by Chapters 4, 5, and 6 on reflection groups and root systems.

It started with a draft of about 70 pages on root systems. The author was almost apologetic in presenting to Bourbaki such a technical and special topic, but asserted this would be justified later by many applications. When the next draft, of some 130 pages, was submitted, one member remarked that it was all right, but really Bourbaki was spending too much time on such a minor topic, and others acquiesced. Well, the final outcome is well known: 288 pages, one of the most successful books by Bourbaki. It is a truly collective work, involving very actively about seven of us, none of whom could have written it by himself.