I bought this book to understand electromagnetic theory from ground up - to follow the inventor's thought pattern instead of pushing equations from textbook in to my memory. But I guess this book isn't enough. The good things about this book is that it gives really good historical account of electromagnetism experiments which is essential before peeping in to Maxwell's work. But major part of this book gets wasted in Maxwell's first two papers which are really not important or necessary at all. It's purely waste of time for uninformed readers to read these obscure papers that really doesn't derive anything important. The whole electrodynamics, Maxwell's famous equations and derivation of speed of light - all that stuff comes in his 3rd paper. Maxwell had originally derived 20 equations (8 if you use Vector form) instead of popular 4 textbook versions. This whole derivation part - the single reason why I picked up this book - is missing altogether. Author just gives final form of derivation like any other text book would do. The pain is that you would have spent weeks to get at this part trying to figure out content of those two first papers and finally left learning nothing new. I also get the constant feel that book is more geared towards historians of Maxwell instead of a person who wants to know his work. Anyway good part of this book is that it provides original text of paper + interpretation notes + discussion notes. The bad part is that original text is often omitted at number of places, interpretive notes of missing for many of the confusing parts of first two papers and the whole part of Maxwell's original derivation is missing in discussion notes. Because the heard (derivation of equations) is missing, you would need to by Vol 2 (not Vol 1) of "A Treatise on electricity and magnetism" ALONG with this book and remember to skip those two first papers. The reason I wrote "along with" is because you will still need this book to read about the original electromagnetic experiments and a modern point of view.

This book falls far short of the intended mark of teaching conduit bending and cable tray systems and its price is certainly way out of line. I was looking for a book that would be beneficial to give as a present to my apprentices as I train them and it will definitely not be this one. Part of the book looks like a parts catalog. I really don't care about knowing the specific part numbers and if I need one that I don't know off hand then I will look at a parts book. There are some beneficial points in this book but they are so basic that you could easily teach them on the job to an apprentice in a day, if it even took that long. Considering price and information available, my recommendation would to be buy the old standard Benfield Bending Guide and use the remainder for lunch.