Rating: 
Summary: Prepare yourself for a lot of work
Review: I am using this text right now in a circuit analysis course, and I believe the text is actually making the course harder than it needs to be. I have a number of years experience in electronics and have taken circuit analysis in the past (far past). This book, while doing a fair job on the basic explanation of the principals, uses trivial examples for illustration, then leaves you to figure out the more complex drill and homework problems with absolutely no help whatsoever. In addition, the authors and Prentice apparently think that a student solutions manual would hinder the education experience, so their solution set is illustrated only in the instructor's manual, which is unavailable to students. Consequently, you have no idea whether you have worked the problems correctly unless the instructor corrects them, or provides access to the solution manual somehow. If I'm working problems at 2 am, running to the library or the department office is not an option. The authors should redo this book completely and make it useful to students, rather than relying on the good graces of the teachers who use it. In the meantime, be prepared to do a lot of outside research to help you with the examples. Unless you have to have it for a class, send Prentice a message and buy a different book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely horrible.
Review: I don't have much time to write this review, and I really don't need much to sum up my what I think about this book; it is the worst text book I have ever encountered. The authors explain only the simplest part of each concept and show simple solutions, then throw problems at the students that were never covered. Even the solutions to the assignment problems are horrible. Trying to trace the solution from one step to the next is impossible, and in the end you get an answer that you have no clue how you got it. Any professors looking to buy this book, heed an undergraduate computer engineering student's advice. If you want some statistics to back up this review, take our last exam for example. The exam was on Thevenin's and Norton's equivalents, superposition, source transformations, max power, and op amps. Keep in mind that this test was given after the withdrawal date, so most of the students in the class are hard workers. The highest grade on the exam was a 70 and the class average was a 34. Are those some stats you would like to return to your department heads? The professor tries, but with a text like this, his task is impossible.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book
Review: I find this book understandable and well written for an introductory textbook. I have limited circuit analysis background and after reading the book, gained a lot of understanding of the basics. Who would sell this book for 8 dollars baffles me.
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: I find this book understandable and well written for an introductory textbook. I have limited circuit analysis background and after reading the book, gained a lot of understanding of the basics. Who would sell this book for 8 dollars baffles me.
Rating: 
Summary: Helpful for the Undergrad Engineer Student
Review: I found this book very helpful as an introductory book for learning the basic concepts of electricity, cirucits, and how to apply higher mathematics and calculus to help with these problems. It provided be a good foundation for circuits prior to taking my second semester electrical engineering class. One downfall, however, is that unlike other science texts, the answers to the odd end of chapter problems are not given in the back of the book. Hopefully, an answer key will be published. Secondly, I didn't really think there was enough information in the first couple of chapters to help a student fully understand Ohm's Law or Kirchoff's Laws. I was still confused after two weeks and had to consult another text for assistance. Other than these two drawbacks, however, Nilsson's Electric Circuits was a helpful textbook.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the paper it is printed on!
Review: I had to purchase this book for my intoductory ECE class, and I ended up dropping the class unable to understand the concepts. The examples provided were extemeley easy and basic, while the problems at the end of each chapter were horrific and ecclectic bunches of components. There was no explanation of how to work them, and few answers to check your work by. I have re-enrolled in the class under a different professor using a different book, and currently earning an A.
Rating:
Summary: This is not a good book at all!!
Review: I had to use this book for my first circuit class at the University of Miami(and sadly second one when I go back to school this fall), and it didn't help me at all. It only presents a small amount of physical information for each topic, which is usually at the beginning of each chapter, and like many others said, does not give the solutions to ANY of the problems in the back of the book. There are alot of problems mind you, but it seems that the author is just asking for way too much in these problems. After you solve for voltage or current variable, for example, he wants you to do about 8 more different things which takes ALOT of time(time most people don't have). He also uses really bad values for the passive and active elements in the circuits. Because of this, people may have a hard time when doing calculations. The most important thing, I believe, the author fails to explain in some detail is the simple passive sign convention. Obviously if you don't know this convention too well, your going to have alot of trouble solving problems(I didn't know this too well, and because I didn't, my AC problems ended up ALWAYS WRONG). He gives about a page and a half for this topic, and it's not explained well at all. The drill problems are joke also. Other topics he fails to explain indepth include Thevenin and Norton equalvilents, transist analysis, and AC circuits. I ended up passing my first circuit course with an A, but I had to resort to 3 other references too mind you. My instructor sucked too, so in a way, I was on my own.
If anyone is planning on using this book for self-learning, I suggest you look somewhere else. I recommend Artice M. Davis' Linear Circuit Analysis. I bought it back in April, and I have been reading it since chapter one(I had to go over everything I forgot over the past year), and I understand nearly everything I have read. I'm almost on chapter 12 now, and I have done everything myself. I understand the passive sign convention, what it means when forcing functions decay with time in Transist analysis, simulation diagrams, stablilty,and it even introduced me to solving time varying circuits with Heavside operators(which makes everything almost algebraic!). This has to be one of the best, if not the best book on circuit analysis today. It's sad too because most people are going to be dim-witted enough to use this failure of a book to fail this upcming circuit class(I hear neither of the instructors for the class are good either.), but since I have Davis's book, I don't think I'll have it too rough this time around. Again, avoid Nilsson's circuit book like the plague!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Electric Circuits book on this PLANET
Review: I have seen most of you guys' complaints about the book and I would agree. Except, I have the complete instructors solutions manuals to the 5th edition Electric Circuits book by James W. Nilsson and Susan A. Riedel. Actually there are 2 solutions manuals to this book. If you want the worked out solutions leave your e-mail address on your own review on here and prehaps I will contact you.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me decide to pursue a degree in Electrical Enginering
Review: I started at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ in the Fall of 1995 with the intent of majoring in Chemical Engineering. I then completed my introductory Circuits course using this textbook and I am now enrolled in the school's Electrical Engineering Curriculum. The scope of the book is just right--It begins with an easy to understand discussion of the concepts of voltage and current, and uses this as the basis for introducing other concepts in subsequent chapters. The Practical Perspectives sections that appear every few chapters offer real-world examples of how the theory presented in preceding chapters can be applied to create well-known products. As a whole, it moves at an excellent pace, drilling you on fundamentals while emphasizing their applications to design. Should I ever become a Professor, this will be my textbook of choice
Rating:
Summary: Not bad - but there are better texts
Review: I used the 5th edition of Nilsson and Riedel for my 2nd year circuits course (and a year 3 systems course) at Auckland University a few years back. The 6th edition, as far as I know, look pretty much the same as the 5th so my comments tend to apply to the current edition as well. The book was not too bad but the explainations were sometimes too brief and a section on series and parallel resonance should be reintroduced (this is vital to understand 3rd year electronics and 4th year communications sys and RF electronics courses). Often it required much-more-than-necessary efforts to fully understand and tackle the problems at the end of many chapters (unless you come up with an excellent lecturer who had comprehensive course notes and you can forget about the text. We had such a lecturer for transient analysis, but we were forced to rely exclusively on the text for three-phase circuits and resonance). A better alternative would be Linear Circuit Analysis by Davis (The school opted to this text instead of Nilsson for same Circuit course in 1999, but has since changed back to Nilsson)
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