Customer Reviews

Bright, fresh and appealing. - By: , 24 Aug 2002
The first edition of Antennas, dated 1950, was 553 pages long. This third edition has 938 pages, so it is clear that a considerable amount of material has been added. Also the primary author has had an additional 50 years of experience to add to the presentation & quality of the material.

Physically the book is very attractive. The modern, crisp layout, utilising plenty of white space on the page, is very easy & pleasant to read. The diagrams & illustrations are all of a high standard. Anyone picking this book upin a bookstore would be impressed by the format of the text. I am perhaps a bit less impressed by the physical quality of the binding. On my copy (paperback) there is a witness line of adhesive on the first page after the cover & I have concerns about the longevity of the binding. One could compare this book with Balanis, Antenna theory, for example, which must be a rival publication for this market. Balanis is a robust hardback with an equal number of pages & yet costs less!

The new title, Antennas for all Applications, demonstrates that the scope of the text has expanded since the original editions. Indeed there are 5 additional authors for individual small sections,in addition to the new main co-author Prof. Marhefka. Throughout, the book is minimally mathematical but highly descriptive & graphically represented. All these factors combine to make this an attractive text for undergraduates. There are also collections of formula to make reference easier.

I was particularly pleased with some little sections of personal discoveries by Prof. Kraus. In these sections he shows the human side of discovery, where these factors were new & strange. So often, nowadays, electromagnetics is presented as "obvious" & "intuitive", whereasin fact this subject can be one of the most confusing & mysterious areas to explore. I think it is important for students to realise that new theories do not just "pop up" fully fledged & working; sometimes one has to work at them quite a bit until they make sense & are self-consistent.

I would say that the main weakness of this book is its description of the fundamental reason for, & cause of, electromagnetic radiation. This subject is glossed over so glibly that only the sharpest of students would even realise that they had been swindled. The "basic radiation equation" given is simply equating a changing current times a length to a charge accelerating. I suppose this means that university lecturers will have to earn their keep, rather than just handing out these textbooks. It has to be said that Balanis is even worsein this respect of explaining electromagnetic radiation; thus if recommending a single text book on antennas, I would still go for Kraus instead of Balanis.

In summary, this new edition of Antennas by Kraus is bright, fresh & appealing. It is authored by acknowledged expertsin the field & will be deservedly popular.

Leslie Green CEng MIEE