Calculus: Early Transcendental Functions

There's a real elegance in math that I think, ironically, isn't captured "in the trenches" of solving problems. The elegance is in abstracting mathematical ideas and understanding them from multiple angles. The power of mathematics is in rigorous proof, but it's really all procedural knowledge without the complete picture that this approach paints, which instills abstract, associative thinking patterns that develop what brains do best. This book is very attractive and well-presented. The graphs are clear, even 3D shapes and surfaces, and they never hesitate to throw in some diagrams to help explain or justify a claim graphically. It sounds like an insignificant distinction, but some of the other calc books are a mess and are harder to learn from, while this one is a pleasure just to read through. I mean really, you will be wowed by how well this book is organized and presented, and you can grasp concepts at a glance rather than muddling through equations. Each section has a long opener that introduces concepts very generally so you can keep in mind what you're trying to do as you learn them specifically. This book takes a very wordy, prose approach to teaching concepts. Stewart and other books tend you define a concept just by the math behind it: the variables, the operations, and the equations. Apparently that's a very complete, satisfying definition for mathematicians, but for the engineers that this book is designed for, it's easier to learn by constructing equations from ideas than by deconstructing equations to figure out what the heck they're really doing.

I enjoy this text book. I rarely comment on text books, but I will do it for this one. It is a pleasure to have such a book as this. It is for the most part, easy to understand and follow. (Which is imperative in mathematics.) If I happen to miss a class, I can follow enough of the text to get back into action. I have used other Calculus text from other classes, and find them sub-par as compared to this one. I would recommend this book to any one, and to your school also.

I love this calculus book. I transfered colleges once and ended up using Larson's at one and Stewart's at the other. In addition, I had to TA a course with Stewart's. I have to say that I think Larson's is more for geared to the Engineers and Science than Stewart's. However, I still think Larson's book works so much better on all majors at introducing Calculus to students that are new to college and have little background in theory. This is not a theory book. However, if the student is in the math field he will have plenty of time in his analysis series to learn all the theory. The one part that this book and Stewart's book lack is where theory is needed more, Vector Calculus. For this part, I always recommend (and am trying to get the department to make standard) is Vector Calculus by Marsden.

This is the best calculus book I've used. I purchased as a student after finding it in the library, despite it not being the required text for school. Concepts are explained well and a variety of examples are clearly worked out in each section. I highly recommend this book.

I have taught calculus for over 20 years, from about half a dozen books: Thomas, Swokowski, Anton, Stewart, and others. Two years ago our university adopted the 6th Edition of Larson. As a pedagodical tool, this text is head and shoulders about all the others. The text uses abundand graphics, a clear design, concise writing, thoughtful examples, and carefully crafted exercises to make calculus accessible to students. I have never had so many students volunteer compliments about a text. This text is simply the "best of the best."