The Duke’s Mind

…is that they don’t take themselves too seriously, but focus on getting the essence of the subject across in a simple, straight-forward, maybe at times even humorous manner.

That’s how Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson (in an updated edition with some additional preliminary chapters and footnotes by Martin Gardner) stands out among the rows of thick volumes of calculus, heavy with their own importance, filled with everything you might possible ever, and will probably never, need. And in the most formal, complicated way of expressing things, too, of course. Thompson seems to have strived to comply with Einstein’s famous advice to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Very heartening is the subtitle to this 300-somewhat pages thin book: (And yes, that is thin, especially when you compare it to the above-mentioned tomes.)

Being a very-simplest introduction to those
beautiful methods of reckoning which
are generally called by the
terryfing names
of the
DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS
and the
INTEGRAL CALCULUS

Or the “ancient Simian proverb” at the beginning:

What one fool can do, another can.

By the way, this is by no means a new book: It was first published in 1910, and has never been out of print since. So if you’re looking for a good introduction to calculus that has stood the test of time — look no further.