[ptarmigan]

The classic textbook for analog transistor-level design is Analysis and Design of Analog ICs by Gray and Meyer (mentioned in a footnote). It assumes a strong background and goes more for comprehension than building insight so I wouldn't recommend it initially. For actual design, Behzad Razavi's books are great to gain insight. I really enjoy his pedagogical approach. Agarwal and Lang have a good sophomore/junior level book as do Sedra and Smith (Razavi's microelectronics book is also good).

Art of Electronics always deserves a mention in circuits book discussions. The former books all take more rigorous approaches to things while AoE focuses strongly on practical insight. It's less of a textbook than the others (fewer equations) but includes many real examples of circuits, from simple to very complex.

[gbpz]

OK, thank you. Mathematical maturity isn't really my problem, it's more intuition. When you mention the Agarwal book is that this one?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ORN4BmJmL...

[mhh__]

Highly recommend The art of electronics for intuition.

The third edition is from 2015 (Lot's of people only have the second edition so it might seem out of date as told by them), and contains just enough of everything to get you going i.e. Not enough HDL to make you a FPGA engineer but enough to understand someone elses code etc. It's pretty cheap as textbooks go.

It also contains "Good circuits; Bad circuits" sections which are quite a good way of seeing how things should be done without reading application notes and such.

[ptarmigan]

Yep, that's the one.