4/5

This was a gift from my step father  for my birthday, as I was just about to begin the process of retaking Calculus at community college. The book was actually extremely helpful for me while learning calculus. So much of the education for math focuses on formulas and memorization, it can be very hard for someone used to thinking about systems and context. I started this while studying more my midterm on integrals and found the descriptions of math history in particular Archimedes attempts to define the area of cones to be the perfect way to start thinking about the process systematically. A couple of the latter chapters really get into the weeds and can be hard to follow without example problems. Overall however this is an excellent introduction to some higher level thinking in mathematics and a cool manifesto for seeing Calculus specifically as a silver bullet to many different types of problems.