-!Rambling warning!- Maybe it's a bit ironic that my first ever post on the forum dedicated to electronics enthusiasts is about this book. Needless to say, I do have some history with it. I'll try not to ramble too much. My father was a huge electronics buff and as a kid I was always near watching completely amazed how he armed with the soldering iron assembled something awesome out of those insect-reminding weird little bits and pieces. It was not very long before I've got my first electronics-related injury - grabbed the wrong end of soldering iron, which my father left on his workbench to cool off
. So, my heart was at the right place when I (as a middle-schooler) found the old (Russian-translated) 2-volume edition of this book in my father's technical library. How bad can it be? The translated title was "The Art of Schematics". Unfortunately, I have not got very far. The style was deceptively welcoming and the mathematics was very simple (or non-existent), but I could not follow the essence of it. Long story short - I've dropped the book and my dream to learn some electronics for many years. On the good side, years and one really bad CS degree later, my interest in electronics woke up again. I've started to gather relevant books and any practical information I could find online on how to get my dream going. Ans yes, I saw this book recommended as an entry point in electronics many times, on different forums (on Russian-speaking forums old 2-volume set of translated AoA was still strong). I've got the 3rd edition and a "hands-on" lab course and pleasantly found New York lights problem in the first chapter unchanged.
Language was still very welcoming, but, unfortunately, good points end here. Mathematics was skipped completely, answers to problems were nowhere to be found (and I was naively thinking that abysmal tradition of including only even or odd answers to the problems in US textbooks was bad enough) and even the first chapter was, as one of the members already mentioned "all over the place". So, ironically, the story repeated, only this time I've made even less progress and put the book aside. Again
. However, not all the hope was lost and eventually I did understood where the catch was. When newbies ask their dreaded question: "What is an entry-level book on electronics?", they get an honest answer, but do not realize one thing - Electronics is NOT and entry-level subject in Electrical Engineering curriculum and for a good reason. It's still an entry-level book (so the answers I've got were 100% honest), but you have to pass Physics 1-2, Calculus 1-2, Differential Equations, infamously brutal Circuit Analysis and universally dreaded Signals and Systems before attempting to crack open anything related to the subject of "electronics" (with the good-old exponential-response formulas, small signal black magic, inverse Laplace Transforms, and other terrible therms I have zero understanding of, were behind your belt already
). Summing up what was said, do I think that AoE is a good book for the complete newbie like me? No, it is not. Is this a good textbook in general? No, I honestly don't think so, at least not now. My main gripe would be mathematics - I personally love it and don't think it should be shoved aside for the favor of what the authors call "intuition". Will I read the book eventually? Yes, due to my personal history. But I will not dare to crack it open before I will get through some of good-old Boylestad, Scherz, Millman, Tietze/Schenk and hopefully Serda/Smith. Yes, I do have a lot of books I never read, I'm ashamed of that and doing my best to remedy this. Apologies for the ramblings. I did not meant to upset anyone. All the best to the newbies (like myself
)