Should I use recommended textbook for Calc 1?

[mrjoules]

I will be starting calculus 1 in a few weeks and I was wondering if i should use "Essential Calculus - Early Transcendentals" our reccomended textbook. I was going to buy it on amazon but noticed it got a lot of negative reviews. I am the sort of student that needs to learn a lot from the book and I'm a bit worried that this book is not user friendly. Has anyone got any suggestions of an alternative in case I decide to get another book?

 

[Simon Bridge]

What does "recommended" mean in this case?
My courses have a single "required" text and several "recommended" ones. To me "recommended" means "optional" and is included for those students who find the required text (which is required because I teach from it) does not match up well with their learning style.

I found the book on Amazon and they say there are no reviews for it yet. Perhaps yours is a different book? This one claims to be concise at 900 pages - which would still be 3x the size of the text I learned from :/

If it is not being used directly by the course, and it has a lot of bad reviews, then don't get it.

I don't know what "Calculus 1" means... so I'll leave someone else to make a specific suggestion. The book I found seems to be for year 1 college though, with that in mind:

There are now many excellent online resources. eg. MIT Online text, and other resources on that page.