MHB What are the Best Calculus Books for Beginners?

[hatelove]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this thread, but I am looking for some supplemental Calculus books for my first class.

I "accidentally" placed into Calculus because I took my school's assessment math exam and scored 100 on the college algebra, trig, and pre-calc sections (only about a dozen questions per section) since the questions were ridiculously easy and I don't think this test did any justice to the basic foundations required to be successful in Calculus and beyond. Which is why this summer I am taking two math courses instead of spending an entire semester reviewing material I am familiar with and can probably re-learn over the summer instead.

Anyway, the text our school normally uses for Calc is James Stewart's Calculus (not sure if it's Early Transcendals) and I'm told by several of my maths/physics friends (most of them are professors or PhD candidates) that Stewart is terrible to learn Calculus from, and rather suggested Serge Lang and Spivak for more rigorous and challenging content. I have no idea what kind of faith physicists/mathematicians have in normal students such as myself that we'd be able to do well with such difficult texts, but I'll probably use them anyway nonetheless because I need to be good at maths even though I admit I am most definitely not the brightest crayon in the box.

Do you guys have any suggestions in particular for entry-level Calc texts?

 

[Ackbach]

You can't do better than Morris Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. This is the book I always recommend, mainly because Kline has real applications. He motivates like no other. It's also Dover, so it's not too expensive.

 

[CaptainBlack]

You can't do better than Morris Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach. This is the book I always recommend, mainly because Kline has real applications. He motivates like no other. It's also Dover, so it's not too expensive.

I like Kline but I do think that the use of customary units is to be deprecated. What we need is Kline in SI.

CB