I'm looking for an easy to read undergraduate book on partial differential equations, ideally something that is not much harder than a multivariable calculus/ordinary differential equations book.
I am preparing for a course which is using the text by Walter Strauss, but I found this text a bit difficult to read. Specifically, I found that many of the derivations were missing steps that were not obvious to me or provided little justification for the manipulations. When I searched for introductory books however the Strauss book seems to be recommended.
Google seems to recommend, among others:
- Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers by Farlow
- Introduction to Partial Differential Equations by Peter Olver
I have ruled out:
- Partial Differential Equations: An Introduction by Walter Strauss
- An Introduction to Partial Differential Equations by Michael Renardy
- Partial Differential Equations by Fritz John
- Partial Differential Equations by Lawrence C Evans
My background is having read A First Course in Differential Equations with Modelling Applications by Dennis Zill. Would I be better off reading the extended version of this book (Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems)? I was a little bit hesitant because I was not sure how relevant the book is to PDEs. The chapters I have not read are Fourier Series, Boundary Value Problems in Rectangular Coordinates, Boundary Value Problems in Other Coordinate Systems, Integral Transforms and Numerical Solutions of Partial Differential Equations.
EDIT: I ended up finishing about half the book, which is everything covered in my course, Chapters 1 through 7.