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Calculus Made Easy | 
 enlarge | Authors: Silvanus P. Thompson, Martin Gardner
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $12.94
You Save: $10.01 (44%)
New (22) Used (17) from $7.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 10510
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Revised, Updated, Expanded
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0312185480
Dewey Decimal Number: 515
EAN: 9780312185480
ASIN: 0312185480
Publication Date: September 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling books online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080515211443T
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Product Description
Calculus Made Easy has long been the most popular calculus primer, and this major revision of the classic math text makes the subject at hand still more comprehensible to readers of all levels. With a new introduction, three new chapters, modernized language and methods throughout, and an appendix of challenging and enjoyable practice problems, Calculus Made Easy has been thoroughly updated for the modern reader.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 First Calculus Book May 2, 2008
This book is a classic. Richard Feinmann, the Nobel prize-winning physicist said that he first learned calculus from this book. The book is hard-covered but a little on the small side. Still, it has three new chapters added to better explain functions, limits, and differentials. Many regard this as the BEST first calculus book ever made. Incidentally, I found a marvelous SECOND-best book at Amazon to go with it. Titled:"Teach Yourself Calculus" by P. Abbott and Hugh Neil. For those who need calculus, these works should be sold as bookends.
Old classic still the best April 22, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Syvanus Thompson wrote numerous books on physics and electromagnetism, math, and engineering topics during his lifetime, but he's most remembered for this great little primer on calculus. Now refurbished by the redoubtable Martin Gardner, who was in his eighties when this was published, if I remember right, it has even more appeal than before. I was most familiar with Gardner from his 25 year stint as mathematical games editor at Scientific American, and for his classic book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, one of the great classics of science writing.
I've seen dozens of books that purport to teach calculus and math more painlessly, and most fall far short of their intended goal. But this is one that hits the mark. It's much clearer and more concise than the usual textbook treatments, and after this, you could consult those books for more information. But if you just want the basic idea without too much trouble and hassle, this book is the best I've seen. It ranks with Lacelot Hogben's Mathematics for the Million as one of the great teaching books on math or science of the past century.
My test for this book was to look ahead at the integration section, which is much harder to teach than differentiation, but the author does equally well here. The worked examples are well chosen and proceed step by step. Occasionally, there was a simplfication step that I had to go over several times due to my own rustiness, but overall, this is the best primer on the subject I've seen.
Sometimes the wording is a little quaint, but that just makes it more endearing, which isn't an easy feat for your typical intimidating math book.
By the way, if you're looking for a good book on Advanced Calculus after this one, Advanced Calculus Demystified by David Bachman is the best book I've seen for easily explaining this difficult subject.
the bridge between a calculus textbook and actual understanding April 1, 2008
This book casually fills in the blanks between knowing what calculus looks like and why it is that it actually works. The authors make it comfortable to get into understanding the calculus without one intimidating and lifeless mechanism after another. This would not be a good book to learn calculus from, but it is truly the best complement to a standard calculus textbook.
 Annotations amount to Trisomy 21 February 20, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Martin Gardner's updates feel like big brother. Silvanus P. Thompson, though a poly-math, was indeed an electrical engineer. The same cannot be said about Gardner.
Even in Thompson's last edition (3rd), he good-naturedly taunted and teased mathematicians. If an update really was necessary, it should have been done by an EE like Paul Nahin (wrote the 1988 IEEE Oliver Heaviside biography and An Imaginary Tale among others), not by a Mathematician like Martin Gardner.
Excellent Calculus Primer June 11, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you have already taken Triginometry and College Algebra, you are perfectly tuned to read and appreciate this book.
Forget the "Dummies" or "Idiots" books that only superficially skim the meanings of the calculus: this one truly *delivers* on it's promise to make calculus easy by explaining not just the "hows," but the "whys!"
I give this book a full 5 star rating.
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