A.J. Sadler

If Bostock and Chandler is 'the' textbook for 'A'-Level pure mathematics, then Sadler and Thorning is a proper accompaniment.
There are lots of examples and a spread of exam questions and these arguably provide the backbone of the book.

Another key feature is the insistence on offering at least one method for working on a particular problem, where possible. The reader might prefer to have just one method to remember (and perhaps more importantly, get the reassurance of seeing the author stick loyally to it) but having two methods does facilitate checking work-arguably an under-rated ingredient of success in an exam situation.

Some readers might find the 'old-fashioned' black and white 'newspaper' layout a little awkward to work with. Topics tend to follow on one after the other where more recent texts might use colour, and space items out a little more over the pages.

More seriously, the layout of chapters is 'function-based' rather than 'operation-based'. You need to turn to trigonometry, or to exponential functions, to see their integration, for example. This means that the chapter on integration is not a 'one-stop shop' and that might leave some readers confused.

Modern textbooks tend to go 'line-by-line' with the syllabus and this feature might well make the 'Core Course' approach seem anachronistic and even abstruse to some readers. But the content's good.

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