Excerpts from book:

This book helps students to master the material of a standard undergraduate linear algebra course.

The material is standard in that the topics covered are Gaussian reduction, vector spaces, linear maps, determinants, and eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The audience is also standard: sophmores or juniors, usually with a background of at least one semester of Calculus and perhaps with as much as three semesters.

The help that it gives to students comes from taking a developmental approach— this book’s presentation emphasizes motivation and naturalness, driven home by a wide variety of examples and extensive, careful, exercises. The developmental approach is what sets this book apart, so some expansion of the term is appropriate here.