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Electrical Engineering 101

'Everything you should have learned in school, but probably didn’t'.

Author: Darren Ashby
ISBN: 0750678127

As you move along in your career, you forget things and I am as guilty as the next person.  Therefore, when the opportunity came to review this book I thought it would be great to see how much I remembered and how much was just useless. The tag line to this book is ‘Everything you should have learned in school, but probably didn’t’. Whilst not quite true (I was pleased to feel some stirring of remembrance in my grey matter), there are some bits in there that expand topics quite nicely.

However this book isn’t just aimed at students, it says that it has something in for everybody, such as students, practitioners and managers. It even boasts that it has something for teachers (whilst apologising for insinuating that teachers don’t get it right). 

The writing style is very well judged, it’s an easy to read format that can be read from beginning to end, or just dipped into for a particular subject.  It also has a ‘Thumb Rules’ portion at the end of each section which summarises the main points to bring out of that section, particularly useful for students when it comes to revision time. The content itself is very clearly explained in a fairly casual manner so it is easy to understand, but still managing to keep quite concise and to the point. 

I particularly like the diagrams in this book. In texts of this type, it is very easy to get over complicated diagrams or just too fussy, but these diagrams are very clean, simple and unambiguous.

One of the best parts of the book is what is termed ‘Touchy Feely’ and is based around recognising different types of people and how to relate to others, especially your managers and co workers. There is lots of great advice, the first implied bit is recognising who you are and having the honesty to admit it.

This book also comes with a CD to support it. The only minor downside to this is the CD is in a packet that you detach from the inside back cover, and once detached, there is no way to store the CD with the book which is a pity as it could be really easy to lose if you keep the book as a reference. 

Overall, if you are a student of electrical engineering, or even A Level physics, electronics or technology then its well worth a read. Managers of electrical engineers should find it useful for those times when you want to clarify in your own head what you are being told, and electrical engineers themselves might find it a useful reference for that problem you get when you have to go back to those long forgotten basics.

Reviewer: Barry Kirby CEng MIET