TABLE OF CONTENTS Many older books have a great deal to offer, having been written during the heady days (one might say 'golden years') when the subject was being created. Amongst the books that I have been privileged to work from and that I would not be without are the following:
Chestnut and Mayer (1959), Horowitz (1963), Newton, Gould and Kaiser (1957), Truxal (1955), Thaler and Brown (1953), Tou (1964), Zadeh and Desoer (1963) and from a little later, Brockett (1970) and Wonham (1985). Zadeh and Desoer is an indispensible book for anyone interested in a rigorous approach to control theory. Brockett is a superb book giving a simple yet advanced geometric view of systems behaviour. Wonham also gives a welcome geometric viewpoint.
More older books have been listed in the references for the reasons that they are still entirely relevant and that their coverage, approach and level of detail cannot be found in current books. For example: Balmer and Lewis (1970) which covers elementary material using a worked-examples approach.
Somewhat harder are the twin books by Polak and Wong (1970) and Desoer (1970). Both are very brief.
Harris (1961) and Maddock (1982) both take an elementary but comprehensive pole-zero view of systems dynamics.
