The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design

I've been an analog circuit designer for forty years. Jim's book provides great historical information and a lot of circuit design information. Definitely a "must read" for someone that wants to learn more about electronics and has a desire to be a knowledgeable design engineer. I really don't understand the smug response from the two-star reviewers. Buy it, you'll like it.

You gotta admire the experienced geeks and how they learnt electronics stuff the hard but lasting way. They can never forget the basics as they have so much practical experience. Being a beginner in this wonderful field of analog design, I enjoyed the book a lot. We tend to cram ourselves with knowledge from different books and our instructors also encourage us to explore different methods of explaining things but nothing can beat the time tested, practical experience gained by doing stuff on the bench. Some of the design ideas are really good. After reading this book read the book "trouble shooting analog circuits" by Bob Pease. The authors have proven that practical bench experience is as important as theory in doing good, marketable designs.

This is a Lazy Saturday Afternoon book. You can read it front-to-back or you can just flip to random pages. Either way, you'll find very entertaining stories (as long as you're an EE) packed with great information. Covers everything from obscure transistor parameters to marketing. It made me a better engineer and I enjoyed every page.

Jim Williams is a famous circuit designer, and has a bunch of friends who are famous circuit designers (or very good ones who are liable to become famous one of these days). This book, a sequel to his excellent "Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science, and Personalities" gives you a look inside the minds of these guys, and the result is very illuminating. It is an eclectic volume, ranging from Harrison's eighteenth-century maritime chronometer to oscilloscope vertical amplifiers to detailed advice on how to approach design problems. Williams's own chapter, "The Importance of Fixing" focuses on the intellectual discipline of troubleshooting, and what a wonderful classroom the inside of a broken but well-designed piece of hardware can be. The emphasis of this volume is growing good engineers, by teaching the rhythm of the insight, design, prototype, debug iteration as practiced by the best. If you have circuits to design, this book will pay for itself in about 5 minutes, and you'll be a more confident and adventurous designer. I've owned it for five years or so, and read it at least annually.