# Please recommend an honors calc book

1. Jul 22, 2004

### mathwonk

I have noticed that all the decent honors calc books I am familiar with have gone out of print.

I do not mean actual pre PhD honors courses for which one can always use spivak or courant or apostol. I am just teaching a nice moderately rigorous course for which an early edition of Stewart or Thomas - Finney or Edwards - Penney would have been fine.

Unfortunately these books are dumbed down in every succeeding edition nutil they become insulting to the intelligence.

Fine old books like Johnson -Kiokemeister, Gillman - McDowell, Bers, and many many others have also disappeared.

What are the new entries in this Don Quixote like enterprise? Are there any?

I would prefer a short one, just covering one variable, and without extraneous CD rom discs glued in the binding.

2. Jul 22, 2004

### phoenixthoth

i did a search for calculus honors lecture notes and got some course materials. i was thinking that maybe you could use a fairly standard book but just assign harder homework that you get from spivak. also, you might try going to universities' web pages to see what books they're using for their honors calculus.

3. Jul 23, 2004

### mathwonk

I tried the last suggestion but had trouble finding that information on most websites.

After reading the enthusiastic reviews of Courant and also Courant and John on Amazon, I may try one of those. Or maybe Lang. those last two are only $50-$60.

I may just use the usual book but make the course harder as you suggest. the moral dilemma there is the books cost over \$100, and the poor ones cost the most.

That is a significant fraction of the cost of the course to the student, and they can wind up with a pretty useless purchase, instead of one they could profitably keep all their lives if the book is high quality.

It also makes them more dependent on class lectures for the real message of the course.

Thanks for the input.