# Books to learn calculus

• Calculus
I have just started to learn calculus.Can you suggest the best book to grasp the concepts and to teach myself the true calculus.

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fresh_42
Mentor
I have just started to learn calculus.Can you suggest the best book to grasp the concepts and to teach myself the true calculus.
Well, you really should have explained a bit where you currently stand and which goals you have. For the "gap" between school and college or university, I usually recommend the books on https://openstax.org/subjects which are free. They might contain stuff you already know, but you can skip these parts, and have many exercises for practice. My recommendation would be a different one, if you, say, want to build a personal library or study calculus in deep, which again would depend on your goals: physicists might have different emphases than statisticians. However, for the basic concepts the books on OpenStax are fine and cheap.

jedishrfu
Mentor
There's Keisler's book on Calculus that uses the hyper-reals approach in addition to limits. Hyper-reals allow you to evaulate limiting expressions in an algebraic way.

https://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html

and there's the collection of math videos at www.mathispower4u.com on Calculus 1,2,3 and other related math from highschool to first year college. Each video is a short 10 minutes.

Scrumhalf
Gold Member
I have not had personal experience with reading it, but a lot of people whose opinion I respect have suggested "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus Thompson. I flipped through it at the bookstore and it does seem like a nice introduction to the subject, emphasizing the concepts rather than the "tricks" on how to solve a particular integral or whatever.

mathwonk
Homework Helper
I may be wrong, but as I read the question, the OP wants a deep grasp of calculus concepts, including theory, for which my best recommendations are still Courant, Spivak, and Apostol.

Scrumhalf
Gold Member
I may be wrong, but as I read the question, the OP wants a deep grasp of calculus concepts, including theory, for which my best recommendations are still Courant, Spivak, and Apostol.
He did say that he was just starting off, which is why I think that Spivak or Apostol would be too much. I really like the Silvanus Thompson book. I picked up a copy myself yesterday and it is really quite brilliantly written. It is an excellent introduction to the concepts.

mathwonk
Well I just located one on Amazon for $859, that's right, (not a typo, not mine anyway), and one on abebooks for about$40, for a book worth maybe $25. Maybe that used book dealer asking$859 was bought out by Martin Shkreli? no i guess in that case it would have been \$1250.