Rating: 
Summary: NOT FOR EVERYONE
Review: The unfortunate thing about this book is that some effort seems to have been made to market it as a teaching tool or textbook that would be useful to neophytes and rank beginners. It is anything but that. If you use this book to begin your study of electronics you will end up very frustrated indeed. The writing has a strange schizophrenic quality to it. Portions of the writing are almost brilliant. For instance, in the very first chapter we find on Page 20: "...capacitors are devises that might be considered simply frequency-dependent resistors." An excellent way of thinking of capacitors! But in other places, like on Page 9, you find whoppers like "A voltage source 'likes' an open-circuit load and 'hates' a short-circuit load, for obvious reasons" (obvious??!!) and "A current source 'likes' a short-circuit load and 'hates' an open-circuit load." Other gems include circuits "looking into each other" as though they have eyes. Such anthropomorphic analogies may (actually, in fact, are) useful to seasoned electrical engineers or even intermediate EE students. Upon those less advanced, like hobbyists or beginning EE students, their only effect is to overwhelm the beginner with a sense of the "weirdness" of electronics and its inaccessibility. In other words, H & H's effort to make electronics accessible will, for many, have just the opposite effect - to intimidate them from continuing their electronic journey. It is harrowing to think that some university physics and EE professors, having succumbed to the not inconsiderable hype about this book, are using it as an introductory text. Pity the poor students in those courses. This, notwithstanding what is written on Page vii of the Student Manual: "...during the summer we see [in an introductory course at Harvard on electronics] many high school students, and some of these do brilliantly." In short: I can only give H & H a C minus in their effort at technical writing, and suggest that beginners and first-year students turn to Grob or to Schaum's Outlines (both excellent) for supplementary help. Don't get me wrong. For the intermediate learner of electronics, this is not only a very helpful book but an incredibly useful one, especially as a reference. But any "beginner" or "high school student" who thrives on this book is not being completely honest about his background (he "forgot" to mention to the person or instructor to whom he introduced himself as a "beginner" the trivial fact that he already has an amateur radio license, or some such) or he is, shall we say, very very smart.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected...
Review: This book whets your appetite but ultimately fails to empower the reader. The scope of this book is much too wide, its attempt to cover both digital and analogue exasperbates this. The analogue circuit building blocks are often either too simple, or vagely explained with inadeqaute DESIGN (mathematics) information to actually make them useful, and allow the reader to MODIFY them to suit a specific application. The book is not coherent or detailed enough to serve as a stand-alone introduction to electronics and is not detailed enough to be useful for a more seasoned reader who actually wants to design something with minimal guesswork. So what exactly is the target audience? Quite often REAL WORLD circuits are not provided, with excuses like "The best approach is probably to buy a commercial VCXO, rather than attempt to design your own." (ch.5 p.302). It is possible to build a simple VCXO from a few discrete components that is quite suitable for many less demanding applications. I purchased this book to LEARN how to design practical circuits, not to be told to go out and buy a pre-built solutions that are likely too expensive, hard to find and overkill for my projects (we don't all live in the middle of silicone valley you know!) When practical designs are shown, like the "Real-world switcher example" (pp.361-366 ch.6) they are obviously far to complicated to study in enough depth to leave the reader with anything more than a general understanding, rather than real design knowledge. Once again, it would be possible in this book to explain a the design process for a simple, but practical Buck Converter, so why not provide such an example? Too much of this book serves more like an incoherent GLOSSARY rather than a bible, with plenty of talk, that often leads to no substance. If this book is stripped down to include only the information that can be applied/adapted to a practical design it would become very thin indeed. In modern times even a general internet search engine serves as a much more powerful (and constantly growing) glossary, than any "jack of all trades, master of none" book like this could ever hope for.
Rating: 
Summary: A Summary of the Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Curric
Review: This book is an excellent desk reference for review of electrical engineering and electronics. It is very brief and summarizes a lot of material in one book. However, this not a book you can read with no background knowledge in electronics. If you have decent knowledge on electronics and engineering, this book can help you recall much information that you forgot and/or introduce you to many devices and concepts that you may have never come across. It's a great handy shelf reference.
Rating:
Summary: Non Academic !! Leasure time stuff !!
Review: This book is not good for Academic work but it seems to be
useful in Industry.I found it useless for attacking exam
questions.But it describes rough behaviour of devices which
looks intuitive but useless for exams which bank more on
formal methods.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: The book is a reference, not a textbook. Helps dislodge old memories from circuits classes taken long ago. Anyone who has to design a myriad of circuits or is trying to remember some basic tricks will find this book invaluable. It isn't very theoretical but it cuts to the chase. I have to patch together many different types of test circuits for IC testing and this book gets well used. If you want basic theory get a textbook but if you need to make something that works reasonably well very quickly, this book is quite good.
Rating: 
Summary: ... heavy book with very little amount of example
Review: This book indeed talks about electornic. But it does in such a very elaborate way... Sounds goods... NO... Text book need no elaboration.
Good:
-The size of the book is designed so that it can be a good pillow Bad:
-They tried so much to avoid the math which makes their explaination very vague and weak. And it is very difficult to understand the component explicitly by just reading words.
-They gives too little amount of example. In one chapter you will see less than 3 examples given explicitly
-They tends to talk rather than giving out the information. They spend a page trying to explain a circuit component, but they spend 3 half-line s to write down the important componet equation.
-I don't know if this situation happens to anyone else.. Everytime I read this book I fell asleep.. The book should stop talking and give me more explicit information in mathematically oriented way and examples to clarify things.
-The exercises in the book has no solution. I can't verify myself if my understanding is right. Bottom Line- Don't ever buy this book if it is neither a requirement nor you need a before-bed book.
Rating:
Summary: Good general reference, begs for another edition.
Review: Encyclopedic in scope, this is a good reference for many electrical engineering topics, including aspects of both analog and digital design. It has a lot of pictures and examples, and often fills in the gaps of theory to tell how designs are typically made. Even after getting an electrical engineering degree, I keep a copy of the Art of Electronics on my shelf for quick refreshers on long-forgotten (or never-learned) topics. There are usually comprehensive introductions to general topics followed by between a few paragraphs and a few pages on more specific topics and an example circuit or two. I find that the text is very well balanced. There is usually just enough information to get the point across: no more, no less. For a thorough theoretical treatment of electronics design, you'll have to look elsewhere, but to just understand common topics, H&H is very good. On another note, this book hasn't been updated since 1989, and the information on microcomputers and digital logic is reflective of that. This chapter begs for a new edition including FPGAs, VHDL, etc., which just didn't exist in 1989, so don't buy it thinking it will help you in implementing your college digital design project. You may want to buy it, though, when you're trying to figure out why your design that worked in simulation doesn't work in hardware (yes, even digital logic is built from analog components).
Rating:
Summary: An excellent guide to practical electronics
Review: THis was not a recommended text for electronic engineers at University -- it is way too practical for that-- however almost everybody bought a copy eventually. This book fills the gap between theory and practice that can develop in academic courses. The book is a very good reference for basic circuit design and construction. It stays pretty focus on key areas leaving specialist topics for more academic/theoretical texts. My copy is getting a little dated (17 years old?) and a few of the topics could usefully be expanded and others reduced.
Rating:
Summary: PHYS S-123 Laboratory Electronics
Review: Laboratory Electronics
(Physics 123 @ Harvard College) Professors Jay Ewing and Thomas C. Hayes Teaching Fellow Nicholas Judson A lab-intensive introduction to electronic circuit design. Develops circuit intuition and debugging skills through daily hands-on lab exercises, each preceded by class discussion with minimal use of mathematics and physics. The treatment moves quickly from passive circuits, through design with discrete transistors, then concentrates on application of integrated operational amplifiers to make a variety of circuits including integrators, oscillators, regulators, and filters. The digital half of the course emphasizes the use of programmable logic devices, microprocessors, and microcontrollers, while treating issues that arise in interfacing both analog and digital devices to a computer. Provides an overview of radio and television, digital audio, signal averaging, and construction techniques. Taught by co-authors of the best-seller "The Arts of Electronics", Thomas C. Hayes. And let nice guy Nick debugging your wiring, What more can you ask for? Watch out though, the course load is extremely heavy (Some people equate it to 1.5 courses.) I found the course enormously useful if you are to encounter circuit design in your future studies.
Rating:
Summary: Great tutorials!
Review: This book can stand on its own -- but the synergy created with its "big brother" makes it fly!
The physical details of the circuits described will become abundantly clear to the reader -- nothing is left hidden, and performing the lab steps cements this in place.
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