It was partially a fluke I'm sure. I'm notoriously sloppy with arithmetic and no book could save me from that. It's not necessarily that Axler is that good. It

It was partially a fluke I'm sure. I'm notoriously sloppy with arithmetic and no book could save me from that. It's not necessarily that Axler is that good. It's that it's just solidly good all throughout. It has the right focus. The goal of the book was very clearly to explain linear algebra, not to make money or get contract deals with college bookstores. And the proofs are very clearly written. I'm sure there are other books out there which are just as good as Axler. But compared to the more popular linear algebra textbooks, at least at the time, it seemed like it was in a class of its own.