Rating: 
Summary: completelly understable, but not big explanations
Review: it is very understable, you can read it and understand it even if you aren?t native speaker. the problem is that sometimes problems are very hard, are you are not showed before how to solve them.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best
Review: James W. Nilsson 2nd edition was a required text at Florida Atlantic Unviersity's Electrical Engineering Department at one time. The text was found to be difficult by most students to understand. Nilsson chose to quickly begin using Current and Voltage sources -- without too much detailed explanations.Note, the usual general malady with most engineering textbooks is that they cover the material in the Chapters at "one level;" and then later authors ask questions at the end of the Chapters that are mostly beyond students' beginning "radar" ssytems. Most authors typically defend this writing technique by saying that it challenges the student by having students spend over 10 hours on any one problem and if they are lucky they may get an answer. But, at this slow rate it's no wonder that students hardly ever acquire a broad understanding of many key concepts, since they stay stuck at too many places in the first few chapters. This becomes a very INEFFICIENT educational delivery system in a Postmodern fast-moving world -- where knowledge's Bandwith speed is in the order of the many Mega bit per second range while the educational textbooks are at the Kilo bits per second range. From a strictly cognitive position, this type of old fashion "educational" European-style methods helps not the students, but the educational "gatekeepers" who have a vested interest in holding back many talented students. The dropout rate in science and enginnering is alarming and society should take a real hard look at this silly mistake our eduators are making. Thus, their keeping this old European style in our American classrooms is bad. Textbook writers MUST write for all students and not for some "pie-in-the-sky" ideal few while overly burdeing other students. Thus, today I'm suggesting that a Federal law mandating authors to write student-friendly textbooks. Normally, I wouldn't suggest this drastic measure but since the emotional pain and dropout rates are so alarmingly high every year, maybe someone should shoutout from some Rocky Mountain's top and say we must do better with writing textbooks. If authors don't want to change, then places like Amazon.com can greatly help persuade these old style writers to change, since the criticsm they will keep receiving will be unforgetabe and huge. A sample reading of other Amazon.com students shows that there is much dicontent with author Nilsson's texbook. Therefore, instead of authors encouraging and helping students learn faster by giving them all the information in a Chapter, authors force students to waste a lot of time chasing other students or teachers for more help. I now think that authors probably concocted these end-of-chapter problems. Please note, that society spends many hundreds of billions of dollars a year on education; however, the damning results from this spending on textbooks, teachers and administrators are mostly discouraging and sometimes even dismal! Only a small percentage of students can learn or "survive" in this inimical educational old-fashioned environment, and textbook authors don't usually help much either. In most engineering curriculums textbooks got so foggy that Schaum Outlines became very popular among students. Other small companies have followed suit, by making technical subjects clearer with many types of Examples problems of varying difficulty. Publisher's Role Technical textbook must improve. Publisher must also pitch-in by formating textbooks that cognitatively assist the reader read faster. Publishers can begin by first placing Diagrams and Figures very close to where the text discusses these particular diagrams. But since Publishers sometimes hire in-experienced workers, students can't expect too much creativity from publishers despite the fact that textbooks sticker prices have recently skyrocketed. Furthermore,these low-paid textbook workers could care less how they lay out a given textbook. They will be prone to slap it together and be done with it! Moving to Videos and DVDs:
But why don't we forget about textbooks altogether and go directly to videos/DVDs which provide 3-d figures along with animation -- which greatly helps students cognitatively retain what they see longer! The printed word can only go so far, and moreover, if it's not written well, then it can be very difficult to comprehend. Most Postmodern students don't even bother reading these foggy rambling technical textbooks since they know from past bad experiences that most textbooks are just good door stoppers. Adding Sound to Textbook
Hollywood discovered in the 1920's that silent movies were not as good as movies with a sound track added. So too society must find a way to add SOUND to textbooks in order to make them more useful and more effcient. Lately, publishers are trying to add colors and even some CDROMs but these are only small steps, while publishers are disproportionatley forcing students to pay much higher prices for these pricey door stoppers. Publishers are changing editions every 2 years whether the textbook gets any significant change or not. Publishers are just ordering that authors comply with this corporate revision mandate. Students are now scarmbling for relief by buying used textbooks and older editions since students now realize that the textbook changes are minor in scope. My Conclusions:
If Nilsson corrected his many errors in his textbook and then also gave the students ALL the info inside each chapter so they could do the difficult problems and then added CDROMs, then his textbook would start looking good. It may even begin to compete with the handful of best Circuit textbooks on the market today. Laely, I'm beginning to become more encouraged that with Amazon.com publishing students real-life feedback to the whole Web world. Hopefully, these authors will get the clue that something is wrong with their old-fashion writing style/methods and perhaps begin making real substantial modifications to their textbooks. If they do, then life would become easier for everyone in American classrooms. After authors have done making real changes to their books, then the final thing for authors to do is begin using the SAME math symbols so as to reduce the confusion. Some auhtors use different math symbols for the SAME device or concept. For example, if you get 100 authors writing an Algebra textbook, you will probably get 100 different symbology math set used by each author to convey the same algebra concepts. This is a nightmare. Most technical books do this sort of thing. This math symbology set situation isn't seen in the Literature or Philosophy textbooks or other Liberal Arts textbooks, it's a problem unique to technical authors. Technical authors must believe that using new symbols set is wonderful; however, students think it's an added hardship while they are trying to learn new technical concepts! So, come'on guys, let's think about the students and stop playing games. Communicate clearly for once and for all and be done with it. I just got done having a big discussion on these same sort of educational issues as above with an RPI alumni located in Troy, New York. What she told me would dismay or even horrify all technical students. She thinks it's wonderful stuff to write a textbook at "one level" and then ask students difficult questions for homework, for a project or for a college exam! I told this adjunct instructor that she somehow got hypnotized or even brainwashed by the old European-style of teaching students. I think it's high time she, too, got modernized and began helping students by ordering well-written and well- formated textbooks. Finally, some teachers calling their students stupid if they can't do the "end of chapter" problems of each textbook simply will not further modern educational reforms in any meaningful way. I hope author, James W. Stilsson, is amenable and open-minded to effect textbook reforms and not add more unnecessary educational burdens to students.
Rating:
Summary: Please don't buy !
Review: Many college in Korea use this book as original text book. So,
i bought this book after questioning to bookclerk woman, i had studied really hard this book throughly.BUT, THERE WAS NO EXPLANATION OF KERNEL OF ELECTRICITY,THERE WAS NO COMPREHENSION ABOUT ELECTRICITY AND RESISTOR AND CAPACITOR AND FLOW OF ELECTRON. So i had teared this book, and bought "introduction to ELECTRIC CIRCUIT" written by Dorf/Svoboda. this is really excellent and great! i had falled in love with electricity.
Rating:
Summary: No solutions = Partial learning
Review: Overall, I like the book's style and explanations/derivations. But I'm really disappointed with books that provide easy example problems and then provide 60-70 MORE difficult practice problems to do with no solutions. The only way to master this stuff is to do many problems over & over again. How are you supposed to do that if you don't try the problem and then see how it's really done? How are you supposed to know what step you went wrong? Now that the semester is almost over, it would be nice to do some practice and really master the material for future classes and detailed solutions would be nice.
Rating: 
Summary: An example of what can go wrong with textbooks
Review: REA's problem solvers series starts out with a treatise on why they have written their books. Many of the problems they express with textbooks are evidenced in Electric Circuits by Nilsson, et al. The following problems, that REA states are evident in many textbooks, are evident with this one: "No systematic rules have been developed which students may follow up in a step-by-step manner. . ." the subject matter is written "by a professional who has insight. . .not shared by the students" and "the examples following a topic are too few in number and too simple to enable the student to get a thorough grasp of the principles involved." While Electric Circuits does a presentable job at being clear, it tends to gloss over important nuances that are not described in the examples. With no answers to exercises available with the book (you can find them on the book's official website with some searching-but even those solutions have multiple errors) and no study guide showing step-by-step solutions to some of the problems, the student is left with trying to figure out the exercises without adequate examples or explanations. This reduces the textbook from being a resource to being a reference that sits in the student's book bag all semester only to be opened to find the assigned problems. For an individual to read to get an extremely basic explanation of circuit analysis, or for an expert looking to refresh his or her memory, Electric Circuits may be adequate. For a student trying to learn the minutiae of circuit analysis, this book is woefully lacking.
Rating:
Summary: An example of what can go wrong with textbooks
Review: REA's problem solvers series starts out with a treatise on why they have written their books. Many of the problems they express with textbooks are evidenced in Electric Circuits by Nilsson, et al. The following problems, that REA states are evident in many textbooks, are evident with this one: "No systematic rules have been developed which students may follow up in a step-by-step manner. . ." the subject matter is written "by a professional who has insight. . .not shared by the students" and "the examples following a topic are too few in number and too simple to enable the student to get a thorough grasp of the principles involved." While Electric Circuits does a presentable job at being clear, it tends to gloss over important nuances that are not described in the examples. With no answers to exercises available with the book (you can find them on the book's official website with some searching-but even those solutions have multiple errors) and no study guide showing step-by-step solutions to some of the problems, the student is left with trying to figure out the exercises without adequate examples or explanations. This reduces the textbook from being a resource to being a reference that sits in the student's book bag all semester only to be opened to find the assigned problems. For an individual to read to get an extremely basic explanation of circuit analysis, or for an expert looking to refresh his or her memory, Electric Circuits may be adequate. For a student trying to learn the minutiae of circuit analysis, this book is woefully lacking.
Rating:
Summary: A challenge for beginning students the first time around.
Review: The author, James Nilsson, was a distinguished professor at my institution, Iowa State University (Ames, IA). It saddens me to say that I, as well as many others, thought his book was very difficult to grasp for first-timers (only) in Electrical Engineering. As the other reviews indicate--with quite a bit of truth--many of his exercises/problems are excruciatingly painful to do (not an exaggeration). However, ironically, it is with great delight for me to acknowledge that I find this a very helpful reference now in industry as a Design Engineer, for I am more mature today in circuit design techniques/methodology than I was as Freshman Engineer. Perhaps Nilsson should have taken a softer approach for the engineering students. This would have been slightly better (only a suggestion).
Rating:
Summary: Utterly inadequate
Review: The book fails to provide adequate information required to perform its own problems! If this book were to actually *explain* the material in a straightforward fashion, the problems would be feasible to accomplish without referring to other sources.
Rating:
Summary: Electric Circuits 6th edition
Review: The difference between the example problems given and the homework problems is analogous to citing 2nd grade mathmatics in college level differential equations. Are the authors that pompous to believe that they are doing any good with this strategy? I am struggling through the book right now. It is almost painful to read, and riddled with mistakes that almost frustrate you from attempting anything else. I am a 4.0 student and accustomed to difficult material, but I usually have something to fall back on if something is unclear. Every time I ask for help from my instructor, I take out the book point out a few passages and problems, and ask him to translate it. The first words out of his mouth are always, "Just put that thing up, it will only confuse you." To any faculty member concidering this book for their class I have this advice: Don't, that is unless the echoes of tortured students rests well on your pillow. My advice for any student looking for the cheapest place to buy the book: Don't, save yourself. Its too late for me. Drop the class and run as far away as you can. I hope this was of some assistance
Rating:
Summary: This is the worst book I have ever used
Review: This book is terrible. There are far to few answers to the problems in the back of the book. The answers that are there are also frequently wrong. It is very confusing, and close to impossible to teach yourself the material by reading the book alone. My teacher says he will never use this book again. AVOID IT.
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