A First Course in Calculus

by Serge A. Lang

Book Overview

This is the fifth edition of Lang's caclulus book. It covers all of the topics traditionally taught in the first-year calculus sequence. The book consists of five parts: Review of Basic Material, Differention and Elementary Functions, Integration, Taylor's Formula and Series and Functions of Several Variables. Each section of A FIRST COURSE IN CALCULUS contains examples and applications of the topic covered. In addition, the back of the book contains...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201041499
• ISBN13: 9780201041491
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Length: 572 Pages
• Weight: 1.97 lbs.

Customer Reviews

best intro cal text

a book that focuses on the foundation without trying to do too much and it does that very well. self-contained and easy-to-follow, this book promotes understanding of the basics. very good

Promotes real understanding of calculus

I had to take a refresher calculus course as a prerequisite to get into graduate school, but the assigned text (Edwards and Penney) was horrible. Like every other mass market calculus, it was filled with colorful diagrams and digressions on how to use calculators, but little in the way of explanation. Fortunately I found Lang's calculus in the university book store and it cured all of my problems. Unlike the bloated E & P, Lang's book is clear and concise. E & P covers more material to be sure, but for the essentials nothing beats Lang. After reading this book calculus became easy for me again. Which is as it should be, since calculus is a surprisingly simple subject if expalined well.

shines without all the bling and flash

This book by the late Prof. Lang covers calculus in a clear and concise manner. I own more than a few calculus books and this book is one of my favorites. The book looks like a math book in that it is not a 1200 page glossy coloring book with multi-colored inserts on every page. I think that the style of this book is a hugh improvement over most of the books on the market. I think a student who buys this book along with a good calculus study guide would be very well set.

simple, but not unsophisticated

As a high school teacher, I used this text with great success several times for both AP Calculus BC and AP Calculus AB courses. It is my favorite calculus text to teach from, because it is very user-friendly and the material is presented in such an eloquent way. There are no gratuitous color pictures of people parachuting out of airplanes here. Opening this book is like entering a temple: all is quiet and serene. Epsilon-delta is banished to an appendix, where (in my opinion) it belongs, but all of the proofs are there, and they're presented in a simple (but not unsophisticated) way, with a minimum of unnecessary jargon or obtuse notation. He doesn't belabor the concept of "limit"; most calculus books beat this intuitively obvious concept into the ground. Even though it doesn't cover all of the topics on the AP syllabus, I would rather supplement and use this text rather than any other.

Calculus for beginning college students

I needed to bring my high school calculus up to speed for first year physics studies and found this to be the only book which covered the necessary ground. The material is presented in a thorough manner with the great majority of topics shown with proofs. The book is very well organized and there are abundant worked examples. Some problems are offered which deal with matters not covered in the text, but usually there is a worked example given among the answers. Lang deals with the material in a clear fashion so that the subject matter is usually not difficult to follow.On the negative side I can say that there is no human touch between the covers. His sole attempt at humor is an item following a list of problems in which he notes "relax". In the foreword he exhibits his firm belief that many freshmen arrive unprepared for college calculus, which may be true. But nowhere in the book is there a note of encouragement, so it cannot be described as reader friendly. Finally the index is pathetic--just three pages for a book of 624 pages, so that finding things can be frustrating.