Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting and Well Written
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2020
Tl;dr: In many ways this is just an aging, well written book on electronics. In some ways it's much more than that. I deducted a star due to the printing, which can make it a bit frustrating to read at times. Overall I found it to be prerty comprehensive, very to the point, and effective in it's delivery.
What keeps this book relevant are two things. First, not THAT much has changed. Yes there are some materials that are different. Yes I did do a nasally laugh when the manual warned not to wear hobnail boots around live electrical. And yes, the chapter on batteries could be called dated. But, like most other engineering fields... what was true 50 years ago is still true now. Second is that so much of what we work on today was built at the time of this book's writing. So you will gain knowledge from it's perspective and it may enable you to reach that sweet sweet understanding of what the person that built what you're looking at was thinking about at the time.
What makes it interesting is the historical value of it. You tend to step out of the present while reading it. For those of us who have older relatives that served in the armed forces, you can kind of feel a connection to them at certain points. Which is pretty awesome.
My only real complaint is the borders. The print is way too close to the binding. It's a pain because you really need to open the book to not have the end of the lines cut off. Like a quarter of an inch more on the inside border of the left side pages would've been great.
