Alas, for a calculus book, even one with the title of `Advanced Algebra and Calculus Made Simple', has no choice but break the rule on equations, and hence is not likely to be purchased widely.

The `Made Simple' series includes much more than simply Calculus. In the 1970s as a young teenager I collected many of these books (which, as I am someone who never throws a book out, all still sit on my shelves). These include the following titles:

Biology, Botany, Zoology, Chemistry, Physics, Electronics, German, Latin, Everyday Law, Religions of the World, and Philosophy -- all made simple, or made easy (the titles shifted at some point).

Additionally, there as a Mathematics Encyclopedia put out by the same firm, and a preparatory volume, `Intermediate Algebra and Analytic Geometry Made Simple' as precursor volume to this title at issue here. They also put out another volume I have, the greatly mis-titled `Statistics Made Simple'. But that's another story.

Can calculus be made easy? I think so, but I'm not sure if this volume follows through on its pledge in the title. Rather like the slim volume I have from the 1930s, part of a series entitled `Mathematics for Self-Study', four volumes concluding with `Calculus for the Practical Man' (of course, women didn't study calculus in the 1930s, we all know!) -- there is probably not a less practical volume of calculus in existence than this, and the made simple volume likewise is not made all that easy.

Most of the `Made Simple' volumes in other areas are fairly accessible to readers. Partly this is done be focussing upon broad issues and topics and not dipping into too much detail. However, this approach fails in topics like algebra, chemistry, languages and calculus where the knowledge is in the details. The layout is reasonable -- I've studied calculus in three different texts (John Olmsted's volume, Howard Anton's volume, and Angus Taylor's volume, each of which bears the basic title `Calculus with Analytic Geometry'), and found that the approach in `Advanced Algebra and Calculus Made Simple' is certainly no more difficult than in these other volumes.

It covers in its chapters all of the basic beginning issues of calculus: rates and limits, derivatives, differentiation, integration -- but it doesn't get too far into any of these. One must wonder, for example, why Anton or Taylor would devote entire chapters or sections of chapters to a topic (say, for instance, logarithmic and exponential functions) where the 'made easy' volume seems to cover these in but two or three pages! Hmmm, perhaps something is missing here...

I must confess that my mathematics skills are not up to snuff as they once were (I started university in the accelerated, honours mathematics programme, but have gone in another direction) -- math is one of those skills that if you don't use it, you lose it, and while I am still generally far above my other religious-studies oriented fellow students in mathematical abilities, and am rare among seminarians in that I have 50 or so math texts on my shelf, spanning from basic algebra to non-euclidean topology and advanced differential equations, I still have to open the book and explore to remember the most basic of calculus or trigonometric functions. In this task, the `Made Simple' series serves me admirably, because it does condense topics into just a few pages, and those few are generally sufficient to remind me of what I've momentarily forgotten.

Given that these volumes are generally inexpensive compared to other texts of the same topics (which is undoubtedly why, as a young teenager I acquired so many), they are useful references, and `Advanced Algebra and Calculus Made Simple' is no exception in that regard.

So, have fun -- see for yourself if, for you, it can be that calculus can be easy.

There may be a quiz!