Rating  - Great, but flawed
A great textbook and reference guide on fundamental electronics. My only complaint is the index, which frequently presents with incorrect page references. I'd like to see H & H come out with a third edition with a corrected index and some more modern circuits, such as LCDs and TRIACs.
Rating - An electronic treasure
Simply, it is an electronic treasure, it covers a very wide range of electronics plus a very helpful circuits, but it has one disadvantage, that is, the excercises inside the book, they must be solved in the end of the book just to be sure that you are doing well with the book. Except that it is a great reachy book.
Rating - DD
I generally like this book but it takes a great deal of work to really understand what they are talking about. They claim that load lines and small signal models are not necessary but then use elements of both. The book is much easier to understand if you include these concepts. It seems to me that these concepts were actually in the back of their minds when they wrote the book. Trying to visualize the path of operation of a transistor without using the output characteristic curves seems very frustrating. Their explanation of the input impedance of an emitter follower is very confusing unless you already have a very thorough understanding of Q-points and what this actually represents on the characteristic curves. If you use their book as a starting point after having a good understanding of analog electronics engineering, then it is a good book. Likewise, the chapters on digital electronics are good, but only if you already have a good grasp of digital electronics engineering. Not many electrical engineering textbooks explain the operation of a differential ampifier well and this one does not either. They do explain the design of constant current sources well, but it makes much more sense if a set of output characteristic curves are used along with their explanation. Not many textbooks really explain how a computer works as a sequential machine. This one does not either. They simply talk about the different circuits used in a computer, but not how they actually work to create a sequential machine. They give examples of circuits that do not work and I generally liked that idea. Their explanation of feedback and frequency response leaves a great deal of information out. Again, if you already have a solid grasp of these concepts, then these sections are good.
Rating - not for novices, but very good
This is an extremely dense book; it covers linear components in one chapter, whereas most textbooks take three. It often requires staring at a circuit, thinking about it in different ways, until you finally see it "their way" and what they are saying makes sense. Electronics is very similar to physics, and this books mirrors that approach by introducing simple approximations first, then teaching you where the simple models break down and you have to employ a second approximation, and so on.
Rating  - NOT FOR EVERYONE
The unfortunate thing about this book is that some effort seems to have been made to market it as a teaching tool or textbook that would be useful to neophytes and rank beginners. It is anything but that. If you use this book to begin your study of electronics you will end up very frustrated indeed.
The writing has a strange schizophrenic quality to it. Portions of the writing are almost brilliant. For instance, in the very first chapter we find on Page 20: "...capacitors are devises that might be considered simply frequency-dependent resistors." An excellent way of thinking of capacitors! But in other places, like on Page 9, you find whoppers like "A voltage source 'likes' an open-circuit load and 'hates' a short-circuit load, for obvious reasons" (obvious??!!) and "A current source 'likes' a short-circuit load and 'hates' an open-circuit load." Other gems include circuits "looking into each other" as though they have eyes. Such anthropomorphic analogies may (actually, in fact, are) useful to seasoned electrical engineers or even intermediate EE students. Upon those less advanced, like hobbyists or beginning EE students, their only effect is to overwhelm the beginner with a sense of the "weirdness" of electronics and its inaccessibility.
In other words, H & H's effort to make electronics accessible will, for many, have just the opposite effect - to intimidate them from continuing their electronic journey. It is harrowing to think that some university physics and EE professors, having succumbed to the not inconsiderable hype about this book, are using it as an introductory text. Pity the poor students in those courses. This, notwithstanding what is written on Page vii of the Student Manual: "...during the summer we see [in an introductory course at Harvard on electronics] many high school students, and some of these do brilliantly."
In short: I can only give H & H a C minus in their effort at technical writing, and suggest that beginners and first-year students turn to Grob or to Schaum's Outlines (both excellent) for supplementary help.
Don't get me wrong. For the intermediate learner of electronics, this is not only a very helpful book but an incredibly useful one, especially as a reference. But any "beginner" or "high school student" who thrives on this book is not being completely honest about his background (he "forgot" to mention to the person or instructor to whom he introduced himself as a "beginner" the trivial fact that he already has an amateur radio license, or some such) or he is, shall we say, very very smart.
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