Rating: 
Summary: The best Calculus I have seen so far !
Review: I bought a used version of this book and now I know that I would have paid more if I knew it was this book. Unlike all those boring expensive books out there--Anton's Calculus or Stein's Calculus and Analytic Geometry--this book presents Calculus in a distinguished way: the examples aren't easy but they completely based on the theory and aren't just of the "memorize and plug-in" type that other's offer. This book is designed for a person interested in understanding the concepts of Calculus, not those people who just want to know "how to do it." The book is also recommended for self-study. good luck
Rating: 
Summary: A Harvard University Textbook in Pure Math
Review: I did not read the book yet. But I know that the book is the textbook of choice of Harvard University and University of Michigan (Calcucus course for math major). So I believe this book deserves at least a 3-stars rating.
Rating: 
Summary: If only I can rate it lower than 1 star!
Review: I had taught this book several times and I only get more and more frustrated with it. This is a text book full of mistakes. I began to wonder if the author was indeed a mathematician. Some complained that this book was proof-oriented but I don't feel this way. The proofs presented are either too shallow or wrong. If I were a good student trying to figure out why a theorem might work, its explanation would only raise more questions for me. And I had yet to find another textbook which gives a wrong proof to a simple result such as lim_{x->0} sin x / x =1. Some praised the problem sets given. I feel the opposite. The problems sets are shallow and present no challenge at all to the more advanced students. Some of them even appeared before the material was covered. The examples are either trivial or wrong. I was startled to see the author gave the wrong solution to some of the most classical problems in calculus. For example, the author could use implicit differentiation to find tangents at a self intersection!! Wow, I am lost for words. More better examples than those given are needed to help students avoid some of the common pitfalls that they often encounter.
The inverse trig functions were also defined most scandulously. Although I can guess the reason behind it, but I think the definition could present a false security to students who are not careful with composites of trig and inverse trig functions. The materials are scattered around with no rythem at all. I often found myself working into a concept and before the climax the book suddenly digressd to something else. The most obvious example is parametrization. This was separated into several parts and could have been easily treated as a coutinuos flow. The treatment of vector calculus part is substandtard, but I assume this is probably hard for many authors. Vectored-valued functions of several variables are hard for most students to visualize in their minds. So the 3D graphics in the textbooks come to play a very important role helping students understand this part of material. But the graphics in this book lack the clarity as those in some other books I had used before. Somehow they look less 3D to me. I had found more than a dozen of mistakes (I am not talking about typos) during the course of my teaching and I had not read the book cover to cover. Since this is a very popular book I regret to see that no effort had been made to correct the mistakes after so many editions.
Rating:
Summary: If only I can rate it lower than 1 star!
Review: I had taught this book several times and I only get more and more frustrated with it. This is a text book full of mistakes. I began to wonder if the author was indeed a mathematician. Some complained that this book was proof-oriented but I don't feel this way. The proofs presented are either too shallow or wrong. If I were a good student trying to figure out why a theorem might work, its explanation would only raise more questions for me. And I had yet to find another textbook which gives a wrong proof to a simple result such as lim_{x->0} sin x / x =1. Some praised the problem sets given. I feel the opposite. The problems sets are shallow and present no challenge at all to the more advanced students. Some of them even appeared before the material was covered. The examples are either trivial or wrong. I was startled to see the author gave the wrong solution to some of the most classical problems in calculus. For example, the author could use implicit differentiation to find tangents at a self intersection!! Wow, I am lost for words. More better examples than those given are needed to help students avoid some of the common pitfalls that they often encounter.
The inverse trig functions were also defined most scandulously. Although I can guess the reason behind it, but I think the definition could present a false security to students who are not careful with composites of trig and inverse trig functions. The materials are scattered around with no rythem at all. I often found myself working into a concept and before the climax the book suddenly digressd to something else. The most obvious example is parametrization. This was separated into several parts and could have been easily treated as a coutinuos flow. The treatment of vector calculus part is substandtard, but I assume this is probably hard for many authors. Vectored-valued functions of several variables are hard for most students to visualize in their minds. So the 3D graphics in the textbooks come to play a very important role helping students understand this part of material. But the graphics in this book lack the clarity as those in some other books I had used before. Somehow they look less 3D to me. I had found more than a dozen of mistakes (I am not talking about typos) during the course of my teaching and I had not read the book cover to cover. Since this is a very popular book I regret to see that no effort had been made to correct the mistakes after so many editions.
Rating:
Summary: The Emperor's New Clothes
Review: I have been teaching calculus at a university for over 20 years. I was on the adoption committee to select calculus texts. I had heard that the Stewart text was a national best seller, so I volunteered to review it. I was startled. I can see now reason why this text is widely used. It is even more difficult to believe that its author has had any classroom experience with honest-to-goodness calculus students. The writing is rambling and obtuse. The design is not helpful and blends prose with examples. The art is irregular, some art is small and some is huge, some topics that cry for graphs have none and some that don't need graphs have several. I have used several other texts and it appears that the author used a cut and paste technique to create this text, taking liberally from other best sellers. After a careful review of this "popular" text, I felt obligated to write this review. Someone needs to point out that the "emperor is not wearing any clothes!"
Rating: 
Summary: Average Textbook for College Students
Review: I have been using this book in all of my calculus classes for the past 3 semesters and it is mediocre at best. The examples in the book are extremely simple and some of the problems seem not to be covered in the examples, so you have to find your way through them. Luckily for me, I do not use this book anymore.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: I have taught calculus courses with this and other books, and this one is actually pretty good. I disagree with those reviewers that say that this is a "proof-oriented" book. Yes, many of the important theorems in calculus (the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, the Mean Value Theorem) are proven, but the topological ones like the Extreme Value Theorem and Intermediate Value Theorem are not (perhaps that's too much to ask of a first-year course for non-majors, however). There is an overuse of color in the text, and the accursed box is drawn around way too many things, logically equating theorems, definitions, principles, and terminologies specific to the book like "The Closed Interval Test". What the book is very good at is providing lots of real-life examples and problems. In fact, these save the book. Each chapter teases some of the more interesting ones (how fast does a turkey cool after you take it out of the oven?) There are extended problems called "Applied Projects." I was particularly impressed with those from the related rates and optimization sections. Problems like these are what turned me on to math. Just a few more theoretical problems would complete the picture, however. Many students can calculate derivatives of functions, but few will come away with an idea of what functions and derivatives really are. In summary, this is very good book for non-math majors (e.g., engineers). It needs only be supplemented in class with the foundational material. For majors, however, I recommend Spivak's _Calculus_ book.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome textbook!!!
Review: I'm using this book for my calculus sequence at San Francisco State University and I have found it to be very helpful. It explains the problem crearly and they go from easy to difficult. Very catchy to the eye...Would definately recomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written
Review: If you are the type of person who needs to see all the details to understand something, then this is a good book to get. If you think your math IQ is high (meaning you you don't need to see all the details), you might find this book a bit wordy. If you are mainly concerned with the applications of calculus, then this book is more than adequate. If you are studying to be a research mathematician, I believe Spivak's Calculus is the best book out there for you.
Rating:
Summary: Much better than worse, but you need additional materials...
Review: Reader reviews on the 4th edition are split (see below), but I liked this book in the calculus class I was taking at University of Massachusetts. The breadth is good (almost too much for a two-semester class), the content well presented, and, yes, many problem sets are well done (although I learned to hate related rates problems in the first semester). Students will need some additional materials, however: (1) the Student Solutions Manual (James Stewart, 4th ed.) which gives the answers to all odd-numbered problems (Brooks/Cole guards its teachers' answers and reserves the even-numbered ones for the teachers' edition). (2) The CD/ROM Journey Through Calculus (Win 98/2, Pentium II or >) was helpful in the first semester, but less so in the second. Most teachers require use of a TI-86 calculator, so you will need not only the TI manual sold with the calculator, but also (3) Single Variable Calculus 4th ed., James Stewart ("Calclabs with the TI85/86"), which was annoying because the sequence of button-pushing was not all that clear, and the correct answers to problems are not given (so you have no way to check)--but you need the book to figure out the TI-86, which is not intuitively obvious. I sometimes wonder: what other calculus books are out there? And how much of a market share does Brooks/Cole have, with this integrated set of materials?
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