Mastering Electronics: 35 (Macmillan Master Series)

This a good book as a reference in analog and digital electronic both for students and qualified electronic experts.

I'll keep this review short. I used this book for my first two years at University in 2001 and it certainly helped me get through my electronics modules. I knew nothing of electronics so this book is ideal for beginners to intermediate level. Like everything else, if you don't understand it the first time, read it again or use supplementary material. The book may be a bit out of date with regards to modern technology, but the basic principles remain the same for electronic components ie diodes, resistors. I graduated with a first so it certainly achieved its purpose for me. I still have this book, and from time to time I refer to it, which brought me back here as I was seeing if a new edition was available. I hope the author at one point will have time to do a new edition, but how can he keep up when a new iPhone or iPad comes out every 6 months!

Don't be fooled by the synopsis of this book, it is definitely not for beginners! I bought this book hoping to get a grounding in electronics. What a waste of money that was. It simply doesn't explain things to any satisfactory degree. It contains plenty of circuit diagrams none of which are explained, so to the novice they are simply meaningless.The author (obviously well learned in electronics) makes the common mistake of providing explanations from a position of knowing the subject very well, and thus is simply not tuned-in to the requirements of the student with little or no previous knowledge of the subject.In fact, I would suggest that this book is of little use to anyone regardless of previous experience as the explanations are so lacking in all respects!For instance, the reader is given (unsatisfactorily explained)information on Thermionic diodes and Thermionic Triodes but is given no information on where such components might be used, or what the actual function of each component is!Very quickly this book becomes an exercise in futility and frustration to the reader who will be left disillusioned by the experience!

As the author of this book I'll give it just two stars, because it's over 20 years since it was last updated!It was designed originally as a textbook to include three or four different college syllabuses, which is why there are some odd bits (like the short section on thermionics) that I had to put in to fit in with some syllabus or other, way back.Even so, it's still useful (if hard going) as a self-teaching book for learning the basics, I think.John W.