Applied Electromagnetism

Rating:
Summary: Review of Shen and Kong's book on Applied Electromagnetics
Review: I think the main weakness of the book is the first chapter on complex vectors. This book should have emphasized on this topic somewhat more. Additionally, in the 1st chapter the vector integral calculus (Divergence, Stokes, Green's theorems) are omitted. This weakness must be corrected by the authors in its future editions.

The main aspect of this book I liked is the very straightforward introduction to Maxwell's equations. After all, it is Electromagnetic *WAVE* theory and from Maxwell's equations how the wave nature of electric and magnetic fields are being realized, is of importance. The book does not dwell on pre-requisite traditional topics such as "electrostatics" and "magnetostatics". This makes teaching of EM at the junior level much easier.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible Book
Review: I'm currently in an electromagnetics course that uses this book and this book is awful. The author cannot explain the concepts in a clear manner. The author skips parts of the explaination leaving me confused as to what he did. Also the examples in the book are not very good, an answer is given with little or no work. The book needs more examples and needs to explain the concepts much better. If you're in a course that uses this book get another book, such as Schaum's Outline of Electromagnetics. From a student point of view, this is a horrible book.

Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: This book is an absolute waste of paper. The explanations are horrible and the examples even worse. My instructor uses this book(wonder why?) and the class average is 55%. Now I am studying Smith Chart and the way those guys explain it makes me wanna burn the damned book. Do yourself a favour. Don't buy this book.