[bluenose69]

The historical notes are a great strength of this book. As for learning the material, from what you've written, you would likely be better off with the sort of books used in first and second year university.

A way to find good ones is to look at some university webpages, to see what books they use in 1-level and 2-level classes. (Of course, start with 1-level.). Those textbooks will be more expansive, with interesting diagrams, problem sets, and so forth. And they will use fancy typesetting patterns, like insets in boxes for subtopics, etc.

I suspect quite a few purchasers will be university teachers who want to have this on their shelves, for when students come by and ask for a book to borrow overnight to brush up on a topic.