Fields and Waves in Communication Electronics

Rating:
Summary: Woa, that's a really intense book
Review: Having graduated as an Electromagnetics Engineer (I hear my lecturers coughing loudly) I found that book hell on paper. It starts off easily enough, but right from the word go you have to think hard about the ideas being put across. If you're good at putting ideas into maths, this book will be a doddle. Unfortunately, there's not many people like that.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: Here's another classic example of a reason so many people dislike science. How can we expect people to put up with the bad language and lack of motivation and application? Textbooks ought to set an example of good writing. The authors do not pay attention to the reader. They just bundle a few points together and call it a book. There's no desire to rise above the median.

Rating:
Summary: Entry Level
Review: It is a good book but not for undergraduates. That is to say, different books are for different people at different entry level. It always refers back to previous chapters hence the reader is not lost when it mentioned things that are mentioned in previous chapters.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic for a Reason!!!
Review: This book may have some perplexing early chapters on basic electricity and magnetism, but no more so than any other intermediate-level physics or engineering text on E&M. That's the nature of the beast - it's a highly mathematical subject. If you want a "cookbook" for the practicing radar/antenna/comm. technician who never wanted/had to learn the theory, look elsewhere. Where this text really shines is not in the "Fields and Waves", but in the "in Communication Electronics." I have not seen a clearer presentation of transmission lines, period, and I own a number of other popular (and widely-taught and cited) E&M books at this level, as well as a rather muddy book on the specific subject of transmission lines. You will not find another similar book with this thorough coverage of real-life applications, simultaneously general enough that it's useful in a broad range of specialty fields. The figures are in general both very clear and very useful.