Essential Calculus [Hardcover]

James Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0495014427 | ISBN-13: 978-0495014423 | Edition: 1

This book is a response to those instructors who feel that calculus textbooks are too big. In writing the book James Stewart asked himself: What is essential for a three-semester calculus course for scientists and engineers? Stewart's ESSENTIAL CALCULUS offers a concise approach to teaching calculus that focuses on major concepts and supports those concepts with precise definitions, patient explanations, and carefully graded problems. Essential Calculus is only 850 pages-two-thirds the size of Stewart's other calculus texts (CALCULUS, Fifth Edition and CALCULUS, EARLY TRANSCENDENTALS, Fifth Edition)-and yet it contains almost all of the same topics. The author achieved this relative brevity mainly by condensing the exposition and by putting some of the features on the website, www.StewartCalculus.com. Despite the reduced size of the book, there is still a modern flavor: Conceptual understanding and technology are not neglected, though they are not as prominent as in Stewart's other books. ESSENTIAL CALCULUS has been written with the same attention to detail, eye for innovation, and meticulous accuracy that have made Stewart's textbooks the best-selling calculus texts in the world.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 801 pages
• Publisher: Brooks Cole; 1 edition (March 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0495014427
• ISBN-13: 978-0495014423
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The right material is presented and removed. My choice for a calculus text, June 13, 2006

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Essential Calculus (Hardcover)

When I received this book, my immediate reaction was one of joy and surprise. A textbook for differential and integral calculus that is less than 1000 pages is unheard of in the modern age. Then, I opened it to determine what the others have that this one does not.

*) There are not pages and pages of problems at the ends of the sections. When comparing other calculus books, it has appeared that there is some kind of arms race regarding the number of problems at the ends of the sections. Properly done, 20 -50 problems are enough, hence no loss.

*) There is little mention of a calculator or a symbolic mathematics program such as Mathematica. I applaud this because I don't use graphing calculators. Simple sketches are enough to grasp the ideas, so I don't miss this either.

*) The number of examples is reduced. It is impossible to anticipate all of the conceptual difficulties students will have, so any attempt to write an example for all possible scenarios is impossible. The role of instructors is to answer the questions textbook authors do not anticipate.

The coverage is that of the traditional calculus text, so there is no loss of fundamental content. I am not scheduled to teach introduction to calculus for some time, so at this time I have no need for this book. However, if I were teaching it next fall, this is the book that I would use.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It does what it promises, November 29, 2010

By 

Jon Torodash (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Calculus (Hardcover)

"A three semester calculus book for scientists and engineers" is Stewart's stated goal, and "Essential Calculus" fulfills it without swelling into a back-breaking tome. The canonical topics are developed thoroughly enough for unity and direction, but also distinctly enough toward launching points for other important math classes in the intended audience's quadrivium, such as differential equations, analysis of algorithms, topology, and linear algebra.

Stewart develops the curriculum around functions and the limit. There are legitimate causes for praise and criticism here. This approach is very effective for a structured presentation; physics, computer science, and some engineering students will benefit greatly from the rigor. Future mathematicians might need more, chemists, biologists, and social scientists a lot less. "Essential Calculus" may not ideally serve the practical needs of everyone in the greater STEM community, but I doubt that any single approach can, and Stewart would be unfairly maligned for falling short here. On the contrary, to his credit, he keeps his inner mathematician from running rampant into pure analysis, and abstains from full formal proofs most of the time. Often he presents a basic outline to demonstrate the validity of important equations and refers the reader to appendices or the bibliography if he or she wishes to go deeper. It is sufficient and very appropriate. Key formulas are highlighted and examples are worked out in a sufficient number of steps with clear diagrams. Concepts are (correctly) taught from multiple abstract problems before moving to applications. My only significant gripe is that chapters 9 and 10 are major topic-changers, without any apparent connection to prior or subsequent concepts (including each other) at first. They require a patience that isn't rewarded until late in chapters 12 and 13 respectively. They would probably be better integrated piecemeal, perhaps with an increase in the overall chapter count to avoid unwieldiness. Currently they reflects the mess that is the standard American precalculus class, which in turn reflects the mess that is American mathematics education in general. If you're going through this book solo, it may be better to skip right to chapter 11 and come back as needed.

Section practice problems are superbly scaled. Even within each tier of difficulty, there are those that mimic the worked examples with minor modifications, those that require a better knowledge of procedure, and those which truly require a creative application. I do not like, however, that the separately sold student solutions manual does not work out the even-numbered problems. This supplement is misleadingly different from the full solutions manual, which I could not find bundled with the textbook.

Having cracked my teeth in university on "Essential Calculus," it will always have a special place in my heart. It is not perfect, but simultaneously condensed and nimble, it teaches the calculus core curriculum in a clear organized format on a function/limit foundation, emphasizing the major points in its judicious use and repetition of the important techniques and formulas.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Professorial Point of View, April 29, 2009

By 

Gerald Rains - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Calculus (Hardcover)

Essential Calculus

Having taught from several different calculus books and been given many more by salespeople eager for me to make a decision to teach from their books, I will admit that I have a different viewpoint about calculus books than most.

There is no way around it. This is a bad textbook for any but the most gifted of students. It's not very good for them either. In general, students learn through doing and not through being "talked at". This is at best a skeleton of a book. The basic theory is covered but not in a way conducive to learning. Having taught more than a thousand calculus students, some who scored 780 - 800 on their math SATs and some who scored in the low 600s, I pity the poor engineering or science student stuck with this book. The explanations are, for the most part, poor, the examples few, and the problems insufficient for adequate reinforcement of knowledge. In reality, being one of those so-called elite students, one who rarely attended classes in calculus (other than those during which examinations were given), I taught myself from an excellent and long since defunct text, one which had more than an ample supply of examples and problems. A saleswoman sent me a copy of this book, I pored through it, and came to a simple conclusion. I cannot conceive of a class, either one of average students at a state university or the very elite of the Ivy League for whom I would choose this text. I have heard it praised to the skies by mathematicians, but those were mathematicians who either had never taught or who, in the case of professors and graduate students in mathematics, had never taught well. The two star rating was probably excessive, but Stewart does cover material skipped in other texts. It's does poorly, but it's done. The first star was required by Amazon for those who would write reviews, so consider this a one on a scale of zero to five.