Div, Grad, Curl and All That – An Informal Text on Vector Calculus 4e

This book is all about intuition rather than rigor.Pros:1) Intuition: Non-rigorous derivations that are so intuitive that it will be easy for everyone to reproduce them and actually really understand the basic ideas behind them.2) Applications to Electromagnetism.3) Figures: A lot of figures mean that you better understand what the author says.4) Quick read due to its small size.Cons:1) Not enough examples: Although the author has justified the existence of the 4th edition largely due to the insertion of more examples, I still think that they are not enough. And the reason is that most of them are trivial. At many occasions I have found that non-trivial exercises give small details that can largely enforce one's intuition and understanding. These kind of examples are simply not here. Maybe they are left as exercises, but it wouldn't hurt if some where examples.2) Author's stubbornness to preserve the small size of the book: While the small size makes for a quick and easy read, it certainly would not hurt if the next edition was bumped up to 200 pages. A lot of meaningful things could be added as there are a lot of topics that beg for this kind of basic yet highly intuitive and pictorial exposition.3) Applications ONLY to electromagnetism: Many students build their basic intuition about field lines on fluids, so it would be very reasonable to have some examples/applications to fluid dynamics. As a second point, I will say that applications to other subjects would have been a pleasant and welcome change from the many applications to electromagnetism.Conclusion:I give it a 4-star rating because while it has many very good points that differentiate it from other books on Vector Calculus, it also has some restrictions. These restrictions are just enough to justify a 4-star rating, although I would gladly give it an easy 5-star rating if it had just a bit more examples.

Sometimes to get to grips with more complex ideas its good to start with a basic understanding, founded around practical ideas, and to learn the underlying abstractions later. The title of the book was really attractive, and sounded like it would sort out these concepts for me straight away. I like mathematical rigor, but was attracted to a volume with less rigor to start with.For me I found that the book came in at too abstract an angle. I later found that I gained a more profound understanding of the concept by reading the book "A Student's guide to Vectors and Tensors" by Daniel Fleisch. It made grad div and curl seem more intuitive to me.

This book is a very useful companion to a course in vector calculus and would certainly be an asset to anyone looking to study electromagnetism. The reason I wouldn't rate higher is because "informal" suggests that the topics can be covered with relatively little mathematical rigour, this is not really possible for a topic such as vector calculus and an understanding of geometric calculus is a major advantage. However, I highly recommend the book for anyone currently taking a course in multivariable calculus as it serves as a welcome alternatives to detailed texts on the subject. The author deserves praise for keeping the presentation of material to the point, but this is subject that on first presentation deserves significant visual association with the subject matter to appreciate geometric interpretations and this book is not designed to fill this role. A great companion but not suitable to learn the subject on its own.

I cant believe this book only has 3 stars at the minute. This book has been around for ages and many people have learnt from it a subject that somehow is prohibitively difficult when learnt from standard textbooks. Come on guys, this is a very cheap book and I would definitely buy this book and any other as good as this if there was any other and if I wanted to learn electromagnetism properly. Particualrly I went through all the exercises and I found them very nice. Some challenging and in the end, it was a very nice experience. Go straight to standard textbooks and I guarantee you wont have half teh fun you can have with this book. They might actually put you off!By the way, I cant believe you can cover this subject in less pages and learn as much as you can from this book. Of course I can simply write down Maxwell's equations and call it a one page book with all covered but you are lying to yourself if you think you will learn this topic in just a few pages. This book is an introdcution and I find it a through one that has exactly the number of pages and questions required for an undergraduate physicist.On a more scientific note, you need to be good at integratinga and differentiating both one and several variables fucntions. Then youc an read this quite comfortably. I would also encourage knowing quite a bit about solving and the meaning of differential equations. After all, the wave (differential) equation is Maxwell's greatest achievement here. the author says you dont need to know much, but if you want to understand the end result I encourage learning them. Besides, who as a scientist wouldnt need differential equations?By the way, have you noticed that many books you read on anything requiring vector calculus recommend this? It must mean something!

Poorly written, barely anything is explained. Worst of all and the reason for writing this review: The solutions to the problems are not included in the massive £30 asking price, you actually have to buy another book. Straight in the bin.

The ex-library book turned up with all the trimmings. Not what was advertised. It was in poor condition with the spine sellotaped with all the usual library book details. It was late being delivered. I wouldn’t order from them again.

Really recommend this one. Teaches the principles in a clear and easy to read manner towards the goal of solving a specific problem, whick always keeps context.