Rating: 
Summary: A sufficiently elementary and yet thorough introduction.
Review: A very good book. Recommended for all readers familiar or even vaguely familiar with Ordinary Differential Equations and Calculus. Its informal style helps a lot. The examples are clear and enough background information is given to understand them.
Rating:
Summary: Nice intuitive introduction to chaos and nonlinear phenomena
Review: Basically, if you have a solid foundation in elementary multivariable calculus (calc III) and some aspects of ODEs, and want to know just what's going on with this new 'chaos trend,' and more importantly want to know why 'chaos' is actually useful, then read this book. As one reviewer noted, this book is not mathematically rigorous, and there's a simple reason for this: one can't explain nonlinear phenomena rigorously with just an elementary multivariable calculus backround. To rigorously treat the material in this book, you must have at least some point-set topological backround and have a decently strong real analysis backround (even Strogatz uses concepts from analysis and topology in an elementary way, such as compactness and measure) and even more advanced books that assume such a backround are sometimes less than rigorous (i.e. 'Perko' often says 'it can be shown' rather than showing it himself.) However, the lack of rigor I think is a good thing. Strogatz always nicely indicates 'why something should be true,' which for a beginner will give them a intuition about the subject so that if they gain the backround mentioned above, they can dive farther into this subject by using other advanced books. Finally, this book should be used as a third year undergraduate text. It should not be used as an advanced undergraduate/first year graduate text, since such courses should be more in depth and rigorous.
Rating: 
Summary: Following some hard acts
Review: Good problems,
Good equations,
Good diagrams,
Good discussions,
Good coverage,
but following "Chaos and Fractals" is very difficult even for the best writer and scientist. As a text this is one I might choose to use, except for the price. So I give it four stars as people
are still poor when it comes to anything in physics and mathematics.
Rating:
Summary: Following some hard acts
Review: Good problems,
Good equations,
Good diagrams,
Good discussions,
Good coverage,
but following "Chaos and Fractals" is very difficult even for the best writer and scientist. As a text this is one I might choose to use, except for the price. So I give it four stars as people
are still poor when it comes to anything in physics and mathematics.
Rating:
Summary: Simplifing A Complex Field Through A Consistent Approach
Review: Having read the reviews thus far, I can't find anything I disagree with. It's the best technical text I've ever read. Many of the strengths have been mentioned already: intuitive approach, clear and concise, wide range of interesting illustrative examples, etc.In addition, the consistent use and discussion of trajectories, phase space, stable points, etc. throughout the entire text allows the reader to incrementally build from each previous lesson. Though other books on nonlinear dynamics use these same tools, the vivid explanations and repetitions with incremental differences greatly enhanced the comprehensibility of these topics. I especially appreciate these consistent methods applied to the consolidation of the material in this text after reading books and papers from various authors using different jargon and methods of illustrating the same concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Simplifing A Complex Field Through A Consistent Approach
Review: Having read the reviews thus far, I can't find anything I disagree with. It's the best technical text I've ever read. Many of the strengths have been mentioned already: intuitive approach, clear and concise, wide range of interesting illustrative examples, etc. In addition, the consistent use and discussion of trajectories, phase space, stable points, etc. throughout the entire text allows the reader to incrementally build from each previous lesson. Though other books on nonlinear dynamics use these same tools, the vivid explanations and repetitions with incremental differences greatly enhanced the comprehensibility of these topics. I especially appreciate these consistent methods applied to the consolidation of the material in this text after reading books and papers from various authors using different jargon and methods of illustrating the same concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: I can't add much to what the people here have already said. They are all pretty much right on the mark. It was my first exposure to a text that developed equations for star-crossed lovers! One thing I would like to add is, it could have used a little more rigor, for there are instances when in a class the course text is all you have to go on, but the references were helpful. This book is a "gateway," I went out and bought the Guckenheimer and Holmes text "Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations" as soon as the class ended.
Rating:
Summary: Great undergrad text
Review: I recently took an undergrad course which used this book as the text. This book is very easy to follow, contains great explanations and diagrams, and is just plain interesting to read. Anyone who has had a basic calc/ODE class background could understand this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I'm currently taking an undergraduate course that is based on this book. This is really a very well-written and readable book. After struggling with many a dry textbook, reading this book is refreshing, and for once actually catches my interest!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect introduction to Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos
Review: If you have read about Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics and you wish to delve deeper into the mathematics behind the theories then this is the book for you. Strogatz is an excellent writer with an uncanny ability to make advanced concepts seem amazingly simple. The exercises and examples make this book perfect for the motivated self-learner. I must warn you however that you had better be at least somewhat familiar with ODE before you dive into this text. I strongly recommend this book!
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