Book excerpt: The Calculus Experience: A Tale of Intuition and Rigor Vol. 1 is a preparatory material for calculus. With the goal in mind to present mathematics as a "language" rather than a "subject", the book follows a rather non-traditional approach. The book is written in day-to-day language and is full of historical instances, stories, lucid concepts, and of course, memes. Mathematics is a rather abstract subject - it has been carefully kept in mind that throughout the course, students do understand what "abstract" means.