[lmilcin]

It is important to differentiate between exposure to fundamentals of electronics and physics.

I believe if you have never been exposed to engineering or another discipline that deals with complex systems (like designing software or mechanical systems) you have to learn to build systems from smaller components. This is where many beginners fail. Even though they can sort of understand what parts do they can't put them together because they don't think in systems. In that case you need something else than AoE.

On the other hand, if you have built complex things in another discipline you may find yourself very at home with AoE with no previous exposure to electronics. That's because you already know how to build systems from lego bricks, now you just need to learn new kinds of bricks and rules to put them together.

[Animats]

That's a good summary. The book was originally written for physics grad students who needed to build instrumentation for their experiments. So intended readers probably understand electromagnetic theory, but need to know how you do things with available parts. That's where it's really useful. I own copies of all three editions. Third Edition is on a shelf nearby.

A good place to start is to get one of the small Elenco electronics kits. The ones with a solderless breadboard. That will get you the basics. With a solderless breadboard, you can always buy and add more components. Much hobbyist electronics is done on solderless breadboards, especially Arduino stuff.

Once you understand E=IR and W=EI, you can size most components. Beyond that, use LTSpice.