telecommunications

This book is evil. I mean evil in the Biblical sense. Think Dante's Inferno and the innermost circle of hell. Actually, being frozen in a lake or forced to eat excrement seem rather pleasant compared to the twisted, nonsensical passages in this book. Perhaps I would have liked the book better if it had been written in Farsi. I don't understand Farsi either, but at least then it would have had an excuse.

The book is poorly worded. Examples are not fully worked, and make critical assumptions between steps that are neither documented nor explained. The homework problems bare as much semblance to the text as I bare to Tommy Lee or a large piece of office furniture. Sections of the book are not in chronological order, meaning that critical information for understanding a section is often several more sections ahead.

If you have to buy this text, I strongly recommend purchasing the Shaums (sp?) Outlines on Fourier Transforms, which is concisely written and has several well documented examples. I encourage you to keep this book in the bathroom as an alternate source of material should you run out of toilet paper. At least then, you may get some use out of it.

This is a very poor book. It is filled with errors, and the presentation is extremely incoherent (not clear at all, despite the editorial claims). Entire paragraphs of thought were left out. The order of the text is crazy. The pictures are not very good. The presentation is not qualitative. My classmates do not understand the material conceptually from the book, and we have one of the authors as our teacher. I wish I could say this book is going to get better in future editions, but it is fundamentally flawed. It would need to be completely rewritten by different authors.

STAY away from this text, even if your school requires it. You will NOT learn the material from this book. If you are a school official, PLEASE do not use this text for your school!

GET BOTH OF THESE instead. They are the best:

-- Linear Signals and Systems by B.P. Lathi
An EXCELLENT book about systems and signals that is incredibly qualitative, clear, and carefully written. The first 6 chapters about Systems are its strength. You will really learn the material well, not just theory, but real world. Its Fourier signal anaylsis chapters are a bit weaker.

-- Transforms in Signals and Systems by Peter Kraniauskas
An amazing book with the most incredible qualitative GRAPHICS. The entire subject of transform analysis is presented with pictures AND complete analysis. You can't possibly understand the transforms better with any other presentation. This is the book to use for Fourier transform analysis.

Signals & Systems is a very complex topic - it needs to be presented in a very clear and consise manner with plenty of examples and explanation. This text has none of those qualities. I supplemented this text with the Shaums's Outline for Signals & Systems; I still could barely follow the class. A much better text on the topic is "Signals and Systems" by Simon Haykin and Barry Van Veen. It accomplished in one edition what "Signals, Systems, and Transforms" has not accomplished in three.