Book excerpt: Presented in a clear and concise style, the Akst/Bragg series teaches by example while expanding understanding with applications that are fully integrated throughout the text and exercise sets. Akst/Bragg's user-friendly design offers a distinctive side-by-side format that pairs each example and its solution with a corresponding practice exercise. The concise writing style keeps students' interest and attention by presenting the mathematics with minimal distractions, and the motivating real-world applications demonstrate how integral mathematical understanding is to a variety of disciplines, careers, and everyday situations.