There's a popular math book called Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz which is about the story of calculus. It's really good and may help bring the subject to life as opposed to rote learning problems.
I’m in the exact same boat as solardev (non-traditional student, taking precalculus, relying on LLMs, getting good grades but not having any true understanding) and I came here to recommend this same book.
It’s a great supplement because it gives you a chance to understand the ‘why’ of things and not just the ‘how’. The writing style is neither too dry nor too watered-down. It feels like the piece that was missing from K-12 education.
On a side note, I’ve found the LLMs to be terrible at math, but insanely good at writing LaTeX. I’ve been using GitHub Copilot to speed up the rewriting of my class notes and I’m just gobsmacked at how accurately it can print out the steps to some calculation after feeding in the original problem.
It’s a great supplement because it gives you a chance to understand the ‘why’ of things and not just the ‘how’. The writing style is neither too dry nor too watered-down. It feels like the piece that was missing from K-12 education.
On a side note, I’ve found the LLMs to be terrible at math, but insanely good at writing LaTeX. I’ve been using GitHub Copilot to speed up the rewriting of my class notes and I’m just gobsmacked at how accurately it can print out the steps to some calculation after feeding in the original problem.