College EE Textbook Recommendations

Fundamentals never change!

My 50 year-old MIT text books still serve me well.

...Jim Thompson

Absolutely.

At the risk of dating myself. My 30 years old collections are priceless, although my wife keeps telling me to get rid of them for pennies in garage sales.

Recently, a homeless man died in his van with his book collections. He could have been an engineer like you and me. I want to be buried with my books as well.

Even back when I was studying for my degree I didn't find college textbooks particularly helpful to achieve a true understanding. What really taught me radio and, to some extent, digital design was the ARRL Handbook. Surprisingly cheap, too. Later it was The Art of Electronics. Then Ulrich Rhode's Communications Receivers etc. Eventually I worked my way up to high level signal processing but that was after I had my masters.

BTW, thanks for the hint about Purplus in the CAD group. Order came in. I wish I could fire up the new DesignCAD right away but too swamped with work right now.

"Designing" is an art. School books provide the fundamental *tools* necessary to carry out your art.

...Jim Thompson

Gee, the first revision of Gray and Meyer didn't have any CMOS analog in it. Low power CMOS analog design books came out later than than.

Time marches on.

Do you need a book to "design"?

All I care about are the device characteristics.

I've never had a course in CMOS, yet I design ASIC's in it daily at the device level.

Likewise I'm sure I could design a toooob amplifier if I wanted ;-)

...Jim Thompson

if you can find a used copy. It is quite dated since it came out in the 80s.

The latest (5th) edition came out in 2003, but picking up an older edition is going to leave out very little (as Jim suggests, much of EE is relatively time-insensitive...).

I like Sedra & Smith, although it is a little "heavy" for self-education unless you're going and being able to spot areas that can be skipped on the first go through; it's 1392 pages after all! It's what I used in college, but it really did serve as more of a reference than as a traditional textbook where you'd end up reading (almost) every page by the end of the course.

is

the

but

Yes. I'd strongly recommend it. Worth casually reading just for the some of its off-the-beaten-track stuff.

I started in MOS linear (as in NMOS, not CMOS) before Gray and Meyer updated their book. There were plenty of tricks in the ISSCC journals that were useful, but I would have liked to have it all summed up in a more "linear" fashion. I don't think education is a waste of time, but your mileage may vary.

I suppose many of the things in the early papers were easily seen once your started simulations, such as the right hand plane zero issue in MOS op amps. Still, why reinvent the wheel?

I find that reinventing the wheel is very educational ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I came across Hamilton and Howard "Basic Integrated Circuit Engineering" at a swap meet. I don't believe it has been updated since it doesn't show up in Amazon. It's probably worth putting on the list.

Hamilton? That must be Doug Hamilton. I worked with him during the summers of 1962 and 1963... he was a UofA professor getting his feet wet in real world integrated circuits... just getting rolling at that time.

Howard? I vaguely remember him as a blow-hard buddy of Jim Solomon's ;-)

...Jim Thompson

My dear Mr. Thompson,

As I type this, I am literally -- LITERALLY -- no more than four inches away from my copy of the book "Industrial Electricity, Part I" (circa 1939). I mention this by way of assuring you that neither my admiration for, nor accumulation of, "time tested" electronics books is lacking. Still, it would seem that solid-state electronics is here to stay, and that acquiring books whose treatment of such electronics extends past copper oxide rectifiers might not be completely unwarranted. Furthermore, there is the sociological aspect to consider. The repressive laws in my state ostensibly forbid vivisection. How else am I to gain insight into the new breed of EEs

-- a wretched heard that it is my goal to eventually join, if I live long enough and if I can find nothing more demeaning to do -- without at least examining their fodder?

Cordially, Richard Kanarek

P.S. I, too, have a "50 year-old MIT text book". It was meant to be a definitive reference on electrical engineering (much as Dr. Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" was meant to likewise for CS, except that they actually finished their book ;-). Reading it thoroughly is on my todo list (which currently has items on it dating back to the

Howdy Joerg,

Regarding your post:

"Even back when I was studying for my degree I didn't find college textbooks particularly helpful to achieve a true understanding. What really taught me radio and, to some extent, digital design was the ARRL Handbook. Surprisingly cheap, too. Later it was The Art of Electronics. Then Ulrich Rhode's Communications Receivers etc. Eventually I worked my way up to high level signal processing but that was after I had my masters."

Thanks for the recommendations!

Admittedly, the fact that a book is/was used by some college somewhere hardly guarantees its quality. For every Strunk's "The Elements of Style" (just to pick a quality (former) college text book at random) there are doubtlessly innumerable lousy text books. Still, even in the EE field, there must be some quality, information packed books out there. (This explains why I asked for recommendations, rather than just buying used college books randomly.

"BTW, thanks for the hint about Purplus in the CAD group. Order came in. I wish I could fire up the new DesignCAD right away but too swamped with work right now."

Glad to have been of assistance with your 2D cad search. (Hint: one of DesignCAD's advantages is its use of hot keys. Once you get the hang of it, may drafting chores can be done without typing a command/accessing a pull down menu. You might want to get the hang of it. ;-)

Showing no greater wisdom than you did, I decided to follow my own advice, too (always a mistake). I purchased a copy of ViaCAD 2D/3D

Questions: a) Am I really the last living sane person left? b) Heaven knows, I'm no (financial or otherwise) genius, but is selling more for less really the way to become wealthy?

Cordially, Richard Kanarek

I agree with her up to a point. I'm appalled at how expensive old engineering books can sometimes be. When I was young, during the brief periods when the dinosaurs weren't on the prowl, I would often scrounge around books stores, picking up old electronics books (somewhat) cheap. To the extent that any of the current crop of young' ins wants to, why not afford them the same opportunity? (Not that it did me much good, sigh. ;-)

a) Great. I don't even have a van. b) Buried with your books? Appalling! Set them free! They are probably the only legacy of their talented authors. What an appalling act of disrespect (to the authors), as well as waste, it is to burry/discard them!

Greetings,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

First, on the chance that it is of assistance to anyone, here are your links (without line breaks):

Second, thanks again for the links (and thanks, too, to the other posters on this thread). I confess that I would normally have shunned IC related texts such as those you mentioned. My inclinations run towards physics (as it pertains to electricity/etc.) and circuit design using discrete parts. (I was strongly affected by a 1940s Radio Electronics book when I was impressionable; this may have distorted my viewpoint.) Thank's for broadening my horizons.

Cordially, Richard Kanarek

Greetings,

Do you suppose that I would value the opinion of some anonymous librarian over those of the venerated contributors of this newsgroup? Horrors!

I guess I'm biased by my own experiences... when I was at MIT there were just the beginnings of teaching solid-state. After graduation I went directly to Motorola SPD for hands-on training in IC's.

Math books definitely have no age.

...Jim Thompson