The Secret Life of Circuits
Many of you follow this blog because of the regular features about electronic circuit design. Today, I’m happy to announce that I’ve been working with No Starch Press on The Secret Life of Circuits:
I think it’s an exceptional book. It’s the reference I wish I had earlier in my life: an accessible, in-depth exploration of how circuits really work, from the motion of electrons to the dark art of embedded system programming.
The book is meant for the inquiring hobbyist, including those who have tried to learn the craft and hit a brick wall. With 420+ pages and 290+ meticulously-crafted color illustrations, The Secret Life of Circuits focuses on modern problem-solving and emphasizes intuition over cryptic formulas.
The book is complete and queued for printing. Sample chapter can be found here. If you order today from the publisher, you can save 25% and get instant early access to all chapters as a PDF:
Full-color hardcover copies are slated to ship late September. You can also preorder from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but these orders will not come with an early access PDF. In Europe, the book is available from amazon.de, amazon.fr, amazon.pl, and a number of other major retailers.
PS: I should probably explain how this book compares to other electronics-related books that you might already have on your bookshelf.
In a nutshell, my motivation for writing "The Secret Life of Circuits" is that most hobbyist-friendly books don't give you the tools you need to confidently design your own circuits. They explain transistors by way of plumbing analogies, show you how to wire an LED and construct a bunch of basic circuits on a breadboard, tell you how to read resistor color codes, and... that's it. You walk away with new knowledge, but it's just not enough to understand what's going on in an op-amp, what's the operating principle of a current mirror, or how a radio receiver works. You can reach for an academic textbook, but you better take a semester or two of calculus beforehand.
In contrast, "The Secret Life of Circuits" focuses on building intuition. It develops key circuit concepts from first principles, without Laplace transforms, integrals, or derivatives. It also emphasizes modern problem-solving: there's no chapter on winding your own transformers or working with the 555 chip. Instead, you'll learn about phase-locked loops, charge pumps, modern ADC and DAC architectures, high-performance MCUs, and so on.
It's probably not the book you gift to a 12-year old kid; Dahl's "Electronics for Kids" or Mims' "Getting Started in Electronics" are better picks. On the other hand, if you know what a battery or an LED are, but could never really make it all click, "The Secret Life of Circuits" might be what you need.
Immediately pre-ordered!