Essential Calculus: With Applications (Dover Books on Advanced Mathematics)

Rating:
Summary: A Challenging (in a good way) Book
Review: I am a graduate student in computer science, and I've forgotten quite a bit of math from college. I picked up this book and made a point to read it over the summer and do as many problems as I could. It is a very "tight" book, in the sense that there is not a lot of fluff (hence the "essential" in the title). The book seemed to maintain a nice balance between too hard and too easy so that I was always challenged. It is a very good book for me, and has a sufficient level of rigor so that I feel like I get some practice in that area as well. I would highly recommend it to someone wishing to learn calculus. In addition, it's always nice to find an author you like, because it usually means other books by that author will be good. As a bonus, it has solutions (or hints) to all the exercises so you can check your progress.

Rating:
Summary: The best calculus book I have ever seen!
Review: It is awesome that I can find most of the important calculus theorems and their proofs in only 250 pages. The author really shows all the proof clearly. This book is much better than the calculus book that I am using in my class. It is definitely worth more than 10 bucks!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Silverman's book is much clearer than other books on calculus that I have seen recently. Everything is concise and there is no extra "fluff". Some may wonder about some seemengly strange orderings in the book such as introducing the differential before introducing limits but this serves to help create an intuitive understanding of limits before explaining their mathematical meaning. Otherwise, the problems range from extremely simple to challenging. All of the problems are reachable by just having read the previous section and are not out of the reach of a careful reader. Most of the problems have solutions and / or hints at the back of the book. The book's title includes the word "applications" and the book indeed does contain them. After each chapter on a new topic, the following chapter contains applications. In addition, the last two chapters on differential equations and multi variable calculus are better than in most introductory books. Essential Calculus is suited for class study or for self study and should be accessable to all with high school mathematics under their belt.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Silverman's book is much clearer than other books on calculus that I have seen recently. Everything is concise and there is no extra "fluff". Some may wonder about some seemengly strange orderings in the book such as introducing the differential before introducing limits but this serves to help create an intuitive understanding of limits before explaining their mathematical meaning. Otherwise, the problems range from extremely simple to challenging. All of the problems are reachable by just having read the previous section and are not out of the reach of a careful reader. Most of the problems have solutions and / or hints at the back of the book. The book's title includes the word "applications" and the book indeed does contain them. After each chapter on a new topic, the following chapter contains applications. In addition, the last two chapters on differential equations and multi variable calculus are better than in most introductory books. Essential Calculus is suited for class study or for self study and should be accessable to all with high school mathematics under their belt.