It's a great reference book, but I don't think it's a good text book. I had a lot of trouble trying to treat it as one and learn anything truly new from it -- f

It's a great reference book, but I don't think it's a good text book. I had a lot of trouble trying to treat it as one and learn anything truly new from it -- for that, I turned to the book by Dasgupta et al and found it much more helpful.