ISBN9780495014287

If you'll notice above, the description states it is a book meant to be as concise as possible, which I believe the author definitely achieved. However, this drive to be as small as possible without lacking 'essential' topics is cheating to the beginning calculus student. Concepts should be thoroughly explained and end of chapter questions should match or slightly exceed the level of difficulty of the explained concepts in the chapter - not heavily exceed it, this is where I took off a star. I understand that the goal of end of chapter questions is to challenge the student, but the lack of thorough explanations in an effort to be as concise as possible does not prepare the student for these questions, in my opinion. Therefore, I had to seek out other materials.

In the end, I found this book to laid out very well and amazingly, for a math book, somewhat easy to read. I supplemented this book with the Idiots Guide to Calculus, which was a life saver on certain topics and went even further with Stewart's Solution Manual for this book. The purchasing of these two additional books, I hope, may be an indicator of the lack of thoroughness for achieving as small a book as possible.

I'm a major of mathematics currently studying as an undergraduate at university. During my high school days, I won several different awards at the math team state competition, and I have read through several books on Calculus so I know a little bit about this subject. This book does a great job a presenting the material concisely, but it has some end of chapter problems that will probably be too hard for some of you to figure out on your own. They are meant to challenge you, but the book fits so much information in such a little space that it cannot explain certain concepts enough to properly prepare you for some of the problems.

This book also suffers from the same problem that most math books suffer from in that you do one section then move on completely ignoring what you learned in the previous section or at the very least concepts presented in that chapter. This can create problems on tests and big problems on finals so it is a good idea to go back and do a few problems from previous chapters every week just to keep your practice up. Picking up a solutions manual for this book and some additional supplement books may not be such a bad idea either. If you are looking for some practice of varied nature the Saxon Calculus textbook has a structure set up that is great for practicing several different concepts instead of ignoring them after a few sections. The Saxon book is rather fast paced though and hard for people who need to do lots of examples of new material in order to grasp the concepts. It also doesn't cover nearly as much material as this book does. As a supplement, it could be very useful for your basic Calculus 1 and 2 courses in college though.

Books and supplements aren't going to be enough for you to truly understand Calculus. If you truly want to learn this you are going to have to pay attention in class, do more than the assigned homework, and probably get a tutor if you are really serious about this. Not all of you will have this problem, but I'm not going to sit here and assume that everyone can chill in the back of the class room and learn this material without practicing it just because that is my approach to math doesn't mean everyone is going to have the natural ability to do that in fact 99% of you would fail by using this tactic. You need practice, and if you have problems understanding concepts then you need to seek help from your teacher, classmates, and tutors. Good luck.