Worse Engineering Book.
596480
This is the worse book I ever had for any of my engineering courses. A book with no sample problems and unclear explanations. It really sucks.
2477908
I am sure that someone has the version of Expression Web 4 that this poorly designed instructions manual attempts to teach how to operate.  Otherwise, what you learn in the first hour is that you have the wrong manual.  How absurd that anyone can learn something more than that in 24 hours.  Even after I was given a copy of the ongoing detailed instructions developed by two women who worked for MicroSoft on the development of ES-Web 4,  i found it confusing to come back to this as a resource.  I have not read every word in this book as I find it difficult to read something something technical that appears to be fictional and serves no purpose other than to irritate.  If I find that an educational textbook or training manual is useful, you will find something in it highlighted in yellow.  I have textbooks that made one student interested in the yellow highlighter market.  Not this one.  In fact, the only marks you find in this book are the few question marks I inserted when I was enthusiastically attempting to find something good to say about the book.

There are plenty of better books on the market for this subject.  Even if there weren't, I would never recommend this one.
3119601
quite possibly the worse book i have ever read on the subject.  examples don't have anything to do with the theorems he has just introduced.  and the examples are all over the place.  how do you have 80 examples or more per chapter and none of the examples relate to each other?  he puts the most mundane topics where some examples are like 3 page solutions.  just plain horrible if you ask me.  you will not learn probability from this book
2161541
The scope is broad and fairly deep, which is good. The MATLAB approach is very nice. However, the book (at least the first 3 chapters) are absolutely atrocious. (I have yet to get beyond Chapter 3.)

Grammatically, it reads like the transcript of an interview. Pro tip: This is a bad thing. I have, without exaggeration, read very poorly self-published novels with better grammar.

Axes of graphs are routinely unlabeled and undescribed. Figure 2.2 on page 21 was especially bad: No axis labels, no numbers at all on the u-axis (or x-axis), "solutions" on the figure that have no explanation at all, and a description that is completely useless. It literally states "The curve indicated by _______ denotes the expression v= u tan u; ... denotes v=u/tan u; and ..._ denotes V^2 = u^2 + u^2." Let me stagte unequivocally that "______," "...," and "..._" are not valid figure descriptions in any situation. Ever. Furthermore, the second equation ("...") is not graphed in the figure, and the third ("..._") is a typo. There is actually even more wrong with this one figure, but I think you can get the point.

Hopefully the book improves, but these first three chapters have the feel of a brand new operating system that is sold with known bugs in order to meet a deadline.

Professors, as a graduating student in engineering, I ask that you not inflict mass confusion and misinformation on your students. Please wait until a better update comes out.
2270565
Horrible book.

Text is confusing. The text under-explains in some cases, but in other cases, adds too much irrelevant detail. There are not enough examples of problems in the book.

On one topic, the text left me scratching my head. I looked up the topic on some free, random physics website that I googled & the website made everything crystal clear in 2 minutes! Unlike the $100+ textbook, this random physics website had plenty of clear explanations, examples, and sample problems.

Additionally, the solution manual that accompanies the textbook only has solutions for every 4th or 5th problem. Physics is about doing problems and this textbook does not cleary and adequately show you how to tackle problems.
491558
I was really hoping that this book would teach something that is incredibly complicated, I was, yet again, disappointed.

The book seemingly starts out simple enough. However, on page 31, is where it begins to get muddy and gets worse from here. It begins by talking about typeography and on page 33 shows an image of something that is nowhere explained as to how it came into existance. At no time that I can see that this term is explained and how that image on page 33 was created.

Upon further reading, it is easy to see that the authors are under the impression that beginners know where to start.

I'll stick with the arduous task of trying to muddle through backward engineering current themes.

When are these people going to understand that many of us trying to learn this stuff need to have simple, step by step instructions?

Sorry, thumbs down on this one.
4824742
This textbook has two parts. Part I is entitled "Software Engineering and Testing." It is a very shallow, non-technical, and awkward  description of the various software development life-cycle activities. It also has a 8-page chapter entitled "Software-Testing Strategies." This 8-page chapter has three sections entitled "Static-Testing Strategies", "Debugging", and "Error, Fault, and Failure." The 8-page chapter, its title, and its three sections speak volume about how shallow the rest of the book, entitled "Software Engineering and Testing" is.

Part II is entitled "Software Development and Applications." It is an equally shallow introduction to Visual Basic 6.0, MS Access 2000, and such.

I am not critical of the authors. I just can't believe the publisher was willing to allow such crap to be put together in a book. If the authors provide a free version of their text online, hardly anyone besides their own circle would ever consider it as useful for anything.
27448
I'm finishing up my sophmore year in EE and we are using this book in class. I currently have a 3.6 grade point average and have received A's in my EE classes. This is the worst book I have ever tried to learn from. The author consistently says, "Obviously. . ." when nothing about the authors explanation is obvious at all. This book is very confusing. It pulls equations out of no where without explaining very well at all where they came from. The examples are much easier than the problems for the chapters so you have no clue how to do the homework that you are assigned. I can't wait to sell it back at the end of the semester!!! In the mean time I'm looking for other books that teach the same topics so that I can actually learn.
3889817
Ferziger's book does a poor job of covering concrete details.  It's revealing to see that many sections (and chapters) are simply long blocks of text, with no equations.  The text gives a qualitative and fuzzy introduction to computational fluid dynamics, and leaves the reader wanting much more detail.

With respect to applications: I used the book in a graduate-level computational fluid dynamics course, and when I was actually writing CFD code, I found the book to be of no help at all.  I used Tannehill, Anderson, and Pletcher's "Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer" to be very helpful with finite difference, and Ptankar's "Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow" and Versteeg's "Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics" to be far superior with respect to the finite volume approach (although finite volume is the main focus of the book).  With respect to the "special topics", nothing is covered with any substance, everything is glossed over, and nearly half of the book is, in my opinion, a waste.  Chung's "Computational Fluid Dynamics" is a much better all-in-one reference book that covers special topics FAR better - with enough detail that one could actually attempt to implement them in a code.

With respect to the fundamental approach: I think Anderson's "Computational Fluid Dynamics" book gives a much better, more physically intuitive description of the governing equations and of finite volume discretization.  Ferziger does a weak job of covering nearly everything in his book, and the finite volume introduction is no exception.

Overall, this is a watered-down introduction to CFD. It does not to justice to any of the subjects it covers, particularly the special topics.  It is a terrible textbook for a CFD class, and although it has been sitting on my bookshelf for 3 years, I always pass it over in favor of other references (see above for list).
251339
This book could be worse, but it has A LOT of room for improvement. I took a nuclear engineering course using this book. Both the professor and the other students expressed frustration with this book, particularly with the questions at the end of each chapter, which usually require a lot of supplementary material to complete, or are impossible to answer altogether.

The biggest problem is all the errors. Oftentimes, how a particular calculation is to be performed is only demonstrated in an example. The examples frequently make mistakes in dimensional analysis, or do not mention dimensions at all. At least one example in each chapter also has some significant algebra mistake. With the absence of units shown in the calculation it is extremely difficult to learn the correct method from some of these examples.

Some of the "problems" in the book are very difficult. They are often impossible to answer without a good deal of information and prior knowledge on the topic. "Introduction" may be misleading; to understand this textbook well it is necessary to have a good background in particle physics and chemical/process engineering.

The section on heat transfer treats the topic very clumsily; although the methods described are not wrong, they are very awkward and roundabout. The treatment is not very in depth, but is very unusual and can be confusing. It makes me suspect that the other confusing topics in the book are also over-complications, but of topics I am less familiar with, so I don't already know better ways to describe the topic.

Another infuriating mistake is that the author describes steady state as "equilibrium", which are not the same thing. This may seem like a minor point but for process engineering it is important to distinguish between the two, and this text consistently states something is "at equilibrium" when it actually should be saying that the system has reached a steady state.

Overall, I would not recommend this book. It is error-ridden and confusing. Unlabeled axes, unspecified units, and unnecessary variable substitutions and difficult to read charts are all features of this book. The best chapter I found in it was the one describing different reactor types, it was a nice brief overview, although it is starting to become slightly dated.
2310139
David Peery's first edition is THE classic aircraft structures text.  Azar's second edition is FROUGHT with errors in the formulas making it no less than dangerous for the practicing stress analyst to use.  Peery's original content was butchered in the second edition.  I purchased the second edition when I graduated college believing I could learn from it.  When I realized how poor the text was, I actually put the book into the garbage.  It is the ONLY engineering text book I have ever thrown away.  That was 18 years ago.  I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of the first edition and have used it ever since.
2756488
My Background:

  I am a junior engineering-physics major, with an interest in microelectronics and circuit design, currently using this book as a textbook for a course on communications systems.

Comments on Previous Reviews:

  I am slightly puzzled by those who think that the book is too mathematically intense, there's really nothing much beyond fourier analysis and basic probability, and most of the text relies only on simple trigonometry.  I actually thought the the mathematics in the book were simplistic and inelegant, and detracted from the presentation.  Also, as to the complaint of typos, if you are actually following the derivations, such typos are a minor inconvenience and can be easily identified, and while annoying, by no means invalidate the book as a text.

  Finally, to the author of the previous review: you should keep comments about your opinions of other people's intelligence or capacity to be engineers out of your review.  Such remarks are useless to potential buyers, and serve only to demonstrate ignorance and short-citedness.

Critique of the Book:

  My main criticism of the book is that it does not give much insight into the topics, and is extremely poorly written.  This makes for a boring read, and I feel like the text did not contribute significantly to my understanding of the subject, but rather I relied on previous mathematical and engineering experience and my professor's explanations.

  Furthermore, although it sounds somewhat inane, I was also really bothered by the layout of the book.  For some reason, new publishers decide that it's helpful to stick boxes and charts and change font sizes etc... almost at random, in order to be more dynamic.  This in itself, wouldn't be disasterous, but it seems to contribute to the disjointedness of the presentation.

  Anyway, long story short, the concepts are explained poorly, inelegantly, the wording is unecessarily confusing and circuitous, the problems are nothing more than excercises that merely develop facility with manipulating equations rather than providing solid design skills or fundamental insight, and the presentation is fragmented, poorly motivated and arranged.  You can probably learn the material from this book if your background is sufficiently strong, but I would look elsewhere.
3385878
Of all the textbooks i have ever used at university (and as a fourth year student there have been quite a lot) this is simply the worst by far. Unlike the other physics textbooks i have used which were good at clarifying material, i found myself more confused after reading this book. Material i understood perfectly well at the lecture become suddenly incomprehendable when reading this awful book. Avoid it.
Having shelled out money at the beginning of the semester for this book, i ended up using other optics books from the library all semester. Do NOT buy this book.
3410346
This was likely the worse book in my graduate career.  Zull attempts to make wild leaps and suppositions then bases the entire rest of the book on those being true.  It was like reading something written by the ancient aliens show on history.
4798685
I've read a ton of tech books and this is by far, by far the worst tech book I've ever come across. The code samples are terribly edited (the code is not even indented within braces), the author insists on using obsolete Hungarian notation - a boolean can only be used in certain expressions - I don't need a 'b' to tell me that. It just creates a bunch of noise that inteferes with codes intent. Like most developers, I like to see examples to get a feel for what the author is trying to express in words. Unfortunately this book is long on verbage and way too short on examples. And the 'patterns' are kind of useless - passing a DataSet as the parm to a WebService so the interface doesn't change.. Gee thats groundbreaking - Does the author design all his classes with one execute() method so that the interface doesn't change? I have a feeling the reviewers who write glowing reports of this book are friends of the author - everyone I have spoken to about the book says the same thing I am saying here.

Update: I recently went back and gave this book another chance and I have to stick by my original review. First off, can AW learn how to format code properly? I still can't get over that Hungarian notation - just ridiculous. Also the books subtitle is Architecture, Design and Process. I'll give you the first two but where is the Process?
329605
As a student I have found this book extremely difficult to learn from.  I am a junior in mechanical engineering and have already taken classes concerning differential equations, partial differentials and some linear algebra so a lot of the basic concepts of this book are not new to me.  The author seems rushed to introduce as many theories as possible into each chapter and misses many of the key qualities that make some of my other text books great learning tools.

1. Lack of examples concerning new theories.
2. Too many steps skipped in solving examples where the theory was just introduced
3. Useful equations not numbered.
4. No chapter summary with chapter highlights.
5. No chapter equation/useful formula summary.
6. No solutions in the back of the book.  This makes it very difficult to study by yourself.

It is obvious that this book is very comprehensive and that most of what an engineer would ever need to know on Numerical Methods is discussed in some form. However, the "text book" side is lacking and needs a major overhaul to become a great learning tool.
1175040
I would not waste your money on this book.  It is very overpriced for the type of content.  This is basically a dumbed-down repetition of information that is already in most popular engineering texts.  I wouldn't pay more than $10 for this.  I actually bought a version in the 90's for about $10.  I don't know why the price has increased so much.  It should not be priced the same as accepted standard engineering texts.

If you are doing design work, there is not much you can use from this book because all the information is very qualitative.  There is a chapter about sizing nozzles and that information could have been condensed into 1 page.  There is a lot of 'fluff' written around the actual engineering information presented.

I'm not saying the book is bad by any means, but it does not have enough 'meat' to command the prices shown here >$70.