Rating  - crystal clear distillation of years of solid experience
Based on the biographical sketches of the authors, it was hard to believe that this book would have much more practical value than the typical skim-the-suface theoretical treatments that come from people with strong academic backgrounds.
This book is an exception, perhaps *the* exemplary exception to the rule.
Outstanding value, worth a spot on your reach-it-with-the-dominant-hand-without-getting-out-of-your-chair reference shelf. Whether you are a student, a freshly-minted wannabe engineer with a hole where you wish your experience lived, or an old rusty crusty know-it-all who hasn't re-invented a wheel in years, this book is a gem, and we can all learn a lot from time well-spent flipping through it. There is value here, not just in the hard/soft/firm/wet-ware nuggets that are scattered throughout, but from the clarity of expression and informal style of the textual presentation.
Buy one for a techy you love: (s)he'll love you right back for the gift.
Rating  - Still excellent, but old in the tooth, and preposterously overpriced
Well, I guess it's been a while since I've been a college student. I'm a crusty old amateur radio hobbyist now, and all college texts seem to have ridiculous prices. This book used to be the best reference I've ever seen on basic electronics for non-EE's, and even for non-engineers. It's not much of a cookbook - instead, it will make you sit down and work through the fundamentals of the circuits you're designing or adapting. The second ed. is getting long in the tooth and it's preposterously overpriced. Another big drawback is that there are no answers to the (otherwise excellent) exercises, and you have to pay out again to get answers to the questions you're not sure about. It will be interesting to see what the 3rd ed. looks like. Maybe I'll start a web site and publish the answers online.
Rating - Essential for working engineers
This is a book that belongs on the desk of every working
engineer who designs electronic products. It's an
essential reference to all the "stuff I learned once
and forgot", as well as an enjoyable read. It's not going
to be much help to a student trying to study for a high-end
college course, but the truth is that nearly all of that
complex math is utterly unused out here in the trenches. The
fundamental "rules of thumb" and "bag of tricks" focus that
AofE has is exactly what we really use when designing most
of the products that people use in daily life.
Some reviewers fault the lightweight treatment of complex
topics or the simplification of certain aspects of electronics.
If that's your big concern, then a more complex and rigorous
treatment would be a better choice. If you just want to learn
about electronics, and have a good reference on your desk to
check up on things while designing, then this is it.
Rating  - Not great, but still better than the rest....
Most, if not all, general electronics textbooks start from basic principles such as circuit analysis and low-level components before briefly covering system design. Unfortunately, such texts drown readers in (mostly) useless theory and math that most engineers will never use.
Modern technology has progressed to the point that no one can know or possibly understand all of the details. In this day and age, when only a minority of design engineers actually design at the transistor-level and most engineers are system-engineers (designing at the IC datasheet level), a new approach is needed: ideally, a general electronics textbook should START by explaining electronic systems at the high, conceptual-level, before working down to the functional block and transistor-level. At minimum, it should explain how to interpret IC datasheet spec.s and how to properly "hook" chips together. (Instead, textbooks start with the gory details of pn junctions, etc. instead of first explaining the applications of a transistor as a switch/amplifier and then constrasting BJTs vs FETs; and only then going into the low-level device physics.)
AOE isn't that book, but it's certainly a good step in that direction. Unfortunately, AOE also starts from low-level details before working up to applications- however, even though the 2nd edition was published way back in 1989, it's still used today because it minimizes the math while emphasizing the practical aspects of electronic design. AOE isn't intuitive or conceptual enough for electronic newbies, but it deserves its reputation as one of the best electronics reference books/intermediate texts around. My main beef with AOE is that its encylopediac coverage means that basic concepts aren't emphasized as much. (In many ways, the Student Manual for AOE is better in this respect.) Also, due to its age, there are many obsolete sections and hot issues of today like signal integrity that are barely touched upon.
By the way, the long-awaited 3rd edition won't be available for at least a year (according to one of the authors) despite one of the reviews below.
Rating  - Tree Killer
This book is way overated. Its way-out, wacky treament of electronics could definitely not be that of any well thought-of engineer. It's frankly just a bunch of goofy unsystematic mumbo-jumbo by some over-educated self-proclaimed "physicists." So imagine my surprise when I read a translation of this in Russian. I think the whole world must have been duped. Do yourself a favor. Go read the Smith book (see my other reviews) and avoid this one like the plague.
Update: This text is the academic literary equivalent of Sanjaya Malakar from Idol. One suspects that its ecstatic fans must be born-dupes who have finally found someone who will deceive and even lie to them in just the right way.
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