"Practical electronics for inventors" is what you are looking for. I have both books and I am a physicist. It's not that TAOE is not for beginners, it could be if you really want to put on the effort and are decided to go deep.

I've been burning alot of time learning electronics. This book isnt too bad for beginners, but I get way more understanding out of Behrad Razavi's stuff, he has lectures on youtube as well as a book which has way more worked examples. OTOH this book introduces more intricate concepts much more early which can be good for motivation if you dont let yourself get stuck on totally understanding them. For example he goes through a BPT schmitt trigger before he even shows the small signal model for BPTs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQDfVJzEymI

No, I don't recommend it if you are starting out. Unfortunately I don't have a good recommendation, but when starting out modern electronics is not unlike lego building. There's more protocols than analog signals.

If you stay in electronics you'll end up with this book sooner or later though.

It’s good for beginners (also a great reference). However, stuff gets serious pretty fast, and the reader is expected to put in serious time and effort.

After Dick Smith's fun way books as an early teenager AoE was my first "real" electronics book. It was certainly helpful for practical advice, but I did not find its presentation of circuit theory at all clear (the hand-wavy analogy about transistor man comes to mind). At the time I had a music degree and very little undergraduate mathematics and only high-school physics.

More recently I've been dabbling with electronics again. Someone recommended Malvino's "Electronic Principles" (I bought the 5th Edition second hand), which I found much clearer for circuit theory than AoE. Sedra and Smith will probably be my next purchase but I doubt it should be your first.

Also, "beginner" could mean a lot of different things. And perhaps more important than where you're at, where do you want to get to? There's a world of difference between (1) soldering together someone else's design, (2) being able to understand why someone else's design works, (3) being able to piece something together from common sub-circuits, (4) produce your own design from scratch. And all of these will vary depending on the circuit type: analog/digital/RF etc.

Reading some of the other comments, and my own experience, it might be a good book for someone who has already spent some time playing with circuits.

But that's not necessarily an unreasonable hurdle. After all, electronics is about something that happens physically, and maybe getting some tactile experience gets the right brain cells working to be receptive to the theory. Or maybe it's just that the enjoyment of the physical stuff supplies the motivation to learn the textbook stuff.

I might think along similar lines if someone asked for a good textbook to learn how to play the cello.

When I took electronics in college, from 1st edition AoE, I had already been tinkering with circuits for a few years. And playing the cello. ;-)

Bebop to the Boolean Boogie

honestly in the post-internet age i would just get on Adafruit, they have so many tutorials and projects that are perfect for a beginner.

as far as a book, i do agree with @nhatcher , i loved Practical Electronics for Inventors but that was before the internet really took over.