Textbooks: international edition

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I'm looking for textbooks for next semester and I figured it's worth looking into international edition textbooks since they're so much cheaper.
I've read elsewhere online that they typically have the same content as US edition books. My main concern is that many of them say things like "SI edition", so if I'm getting one for an engineering class I want to make sure that it actually is the same as the US edition because even something small like changing units can be pretty important.</p>

<p>Does anyone have any experience?</p>

2

<p>We’ve used international editions with no problems. Amazon isn’t supposed to sell them in the US but they do. The savings are substantial.</p>

3

<p>What is your major? I can the units thing being an issue in CivE and MechE, but not ChemE, and EE uses metric anyway, so it won’t matter there</p>

4

<p>I’m MechE. Does anyone have any direct experience?</p>

<p>Thanks for your help so far.</p>

5

<p>Actually, its not entirely the same. I found that most of the problems in the internationally edition are slightly different (Units are not the same, problems are somewhat rearranged, and some different problems). Otherwise, the content topics are similiar.</p>

6

<p>International editions also tend to be of a bit lower quality. Often times they’re paperbacks, and depending upon which country they’re from, they can have really cheap paper.</p>

<p>Not a big deal if you plan to sell your books at the end of the term, but if you like to keep them it might be worth the extra few bucks to get the nicer US edition.</p>

7

<p>If your prof tends to use problems out of the book as homework questions, I wouldn’t recommend getting the international edition. Like ele said, the problems are different.</p>

8

<p>Son took Algorithms last semester using CLR. The international edition was about half price and a lot of the problems were assigned out of the book. The international edition was in hardcover. Some of the softcover US editions cost more than the International Hardcover edition.</p>

9

<p>The international edition books have exactly the same content, including units.</p>

10

<p>I’ve never had international editions that had different problem that the US editions.</p>

11

<p>From my experience, the international editions have all been identical to the US edition. I highly recommend international editions which have saved me probably thousands of dollars by now since i’ve been able to find $150 books for $15ish in the international edition!</p>