W. Ghost 2008-08-29

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

This book is OK for those who just got out of highschool and have problems understanding limits, continuity, differentials and derivatives. However, although the explanations are absolutely clear, the book has some problems: it doesn't show interesting examples (all are very simple), and the problems are too few and not really challenging.

Compare this to Tom Apostol's book. Or, try to solve problems from other Calculus books having read only this text.

Another thing: the book deals almost exclusively with Calculus of functions of *one variable*. There is a short introduction to several variables and partial derivatives at the end, but that is far from what you'll see in a full Calculus course. You will need another book later.

Franklin Schmidt 2008-05-20

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

This author doesn't realize that a picture is worth a thousand words. First he presents the thousand words and the algebraic proof, only showing the geometric meaning afterward. But it is the geometric meaning that is intuitive. The geometric meaning should come first, and the algebraic proof afterwards, so that the reader can have an intuitive understanding of what is being proved. I would also say that there is somewhat more formalism than needed, as is the case with almost all math books.

Liam Groener 2007-07-15

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

This book apparently was written for the the typically one semester course in introductory calculus designed for business, education, and life science majors. For this purpose, it is excellent. It is very clearly written and has good problems.
However, it should be mentioned that the book does not cover trig functions at all. Thus, it is not suitable for courses intended for physical science or engineering majors. It does cover log and exponential functions though, in a way that was new to me. Rather than deriving the derivative of log, it simply defines log in terms of the integral of 1/x. The exponential is then defined as the inverse of log.

Behavioral Scientist 2007-01-05

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

This is a very neat little introduction to basic single variable calculus that also includes a final chapter on partial differentiation. It's fairly rigorous and would lead naturally into a first course in real analysis. The problems are all fairly easy and many can be `done in your head' (so saving paper) but they are typically not as boring as the usual `follow the method' type problems you see in many of the big introductory calculus texts. Some problems even ask you to construct proofs of simple theorems. This is all good stuff and for the money, who can argue? Given the aims, coverage and price, I don't see how it could be much better - five stars from me.

Geoffrey Zenger 2002-06-25

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

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.