I was forced to use this book for Calculus 3, and I must say it is the most god-awful waste of paper ever. Having gone through the entire calculus curriculum and earned an electrical engineering degree, I had to use a pretty wide variety of books and this was, by far, the worst of the bunch. The only good thing about it is that the authors were very direct, up front, that the book did not have many worked-out examples. In reality, it had almost no examples and provided very little guidance on how to approach anything but the most basic problems. The "explanatory" material was almost non-existent as well, sometimes amounting to a page and a half (or less) before you get to the problem set. The approach may have worked if the problem sets were limited to basic problems. But, many of the problems were so advanced that my teacher, who granted did not do much vetting of the problems when he chose exam questions, had to turn some of them into bonus questions because his solution when he was working out the answer key ended up taking five pages to work through.
So, if you have to use this book for class, look at it as a problems repository and if you have a good teacher, then just pay attention to the lectures. If you are looking for a book to teach yourself the material, run in the opposite direction far away from this one. If you need additional study aids, there are some good ones out there including the Calculus 3 Tutor DVDs, REA's Calculus III Essentials, the Schaum's outlines, etc. Any of those will provide much-needed context and guidance for how to solve the problems that this will not give you. Or, you can just look for things on YouTube and find a lot there, some of it better than others.
I do get the idea that the hand-holding and spoon-feeding should get reduced the farther you get into the curriculum. However, multivariable calculus is the most difficult class of the entire calculus sequence (even most professors admit that) so to write a book that basically just shows that you know how to work out the proofs is really not helpful to a student trying to learn the subject. So, I suggest avoiding this book at all costs if you can possibly do so. If you do have to use it, find a good study aid, ask lots of questions in class, and try to form a study group. I did all of those and managed to get an A in Calc III, but I gave up trying to read this to learn the material about three weeks into the semester.
So, if you have to use this book for class, look at it as a problems repository and if you have a good teacher, then just pay attention to the lectures. If you are looking for a book to teach yourself the material, run in the opposite direction far away from this one. If you need additional study aids, there are some good ones out there including the Calculus 3 Tutor DVDs, REA's Calculus III Essentials, the Schaum's outlines, etc. Any of those will provide much-needed context and guidance for how to solve the problems that this will not give you. Or, you can just look for things on YouTube and find a lot there, some of it better than others.
I do get the idea that the hand-holding and spoon-feeding should get reduced the farther you get into the curriculum. However, multivariable calculus is the most difficult class of the entire calculus sequence (even most professors admit that) so to write a book that basically just shows that you know how to work out the proofs is really not helpful to a student trying to learn the subject. So, I suggest avoiding this book at all costs if you can possibly do so. If you do have to use it, find a good study aid, ask lots of questions in class, and try to form a study group. I did all of those and managed to get an A in Calc III, but I gave up trying to read this to learn the material about three weeks into the semester.
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