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Comment by presscast | Hacker News Reader

If one wants to learn calculus, I can't recommend Silvanus P. Thompson's Calculus Made Easy enough.

It's one of those old (1920's, IIRC) books that gets right down to brass tax, and doesn't clutter your understanding with useless fluff designed to make learning maths "fun". These kinds of books are all too rare.

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Found an html conversion - http://calculusmadeeasy.org/

This was one of the books Feynman used to learn Calculus.

The other was Advanced Calculus by Woods:

https://libgen.pw/download/book/5a1f04723a044650f5fbaf91

I have seen this discussed online several times. Here is a HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192894

that indicates the text Feynman first used was Calculus for the Practical Man by J. E. Thompson. Both are quality texts and as the linked HN thread notes, can be found on archive.org.

My mistake. Thanks!

1914 to be picky: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14161876 (link to pdf)

It's also on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

Looked at the web version. Wow, it was nicely and clearly written. Clear, simple, and most importantly to the point.

Can someone please recommend more books like this?

(The subject matter does not matter much, it is a joy to read such books regardless of actual subject!)

Hah! I'm reading this as well, and it's not only hilarious to read, but man, it's so easy.

This explanation actually reminded me of that book and I suspect it was an inspiration.

I couldn't find contact details, so I have to reply here.

For reference, the expression is "Brass Tacks":

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/get_down_to_brass_tacks

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