IMO these books are a bit tricky. Some will work through them. I find that I can't "Dover" very well, as much as I love the idea of their books.<p>To me there is always this organized mix of stuff I knew long ago, and stuff that I don't know, which still makes no sense, and which the book doesn't really go into in the desired depth.<p>IMHO there's a point at which you have to say "here's what gets me--I have no idea what _divide by_ really means grammatically," or some dumb statement like that. Then you take that as deep as possible and find the leverage rapidly building as you take on math not from an organized overview, but from a remote corner of the absolutely terrifying and embarrassing world of the newcomer's idiocy.<p>--A non-mathematician