Logan's applied math: a review and meditation

I am going to give a short, positive review of an applied math book I just bought, but before you read it, please take a look at my post on ethics over at my other blog, Inner Lighting.

Logan's "Applied Mathematics", 3rd. ed., which I just picked up, starts out at an interesting place: dimensional analysis. It explains the idea, then works out several examples, from engineering and science. It goes on right away to singular perturbations, boundary layers, and related ideas, topics you usually don't see in a beginning book like this. The book is clear and the examples are fascinating.

There are other ways to teach this subject; Strang's book, the classic in this area, starts off with gaussian elimination and makes it the cornerstone for much of the subject, and is more integrated than Logan's book.