Art of Electronics is a 300-level course (3rd year college).

Its a great book for everyone at that level. But good luck even reading the first few pages if you don't know the basics yet.

Art of Electronics is closer to the "last book you read" on electronics, rather than the first book. Its completely the opposite from what the original poster is asking here.

> But good luck even reading the first few pages if you don't know the basics yet.

Which concern the definition of Voltage, Current, Resistance and Ohm's Law as well as thorough descriptions of fundamental electronic components.

I've heard a lot about the dubious quality of STEM education in the US highschool system, but this is all pretty fundamental physics knowledge taught as early as in primary school in many countries around the world and I'd suppose the same is true there as well.

OK so re-reading OP's title it wasn't clear to me if they requested something explaining basic electricity concepts or basic electronics engineering.

For the former AoE may indeed be a bit unsuitable, however under no circumstances is it as beginner - hostile to EE students/enthusiasts as you made it out to be.

I never learned about electronics basics in K-12 in the West Coast US. We learned classical mechanics physics, chemistry, and even basic CS, but no electronics at all. Closest was galvanic cells in Chemistry. Not even ohms law. Coincidentally, one of my major interests is in electronics.

When was that, out of curiosity? I was on the East Coast for middle school, we definitely covered some electronics basics including making simple circuits (and I figured out how to use switches and three-way switches to make logic circuits) and the basic math behind it, the class was called "physical science" (to contrast with life science which was a biology + ecology course the previous year). In Nevada for high school physics it was mostly about classical mechanics (motion) but we did a segment on electronics. All of this was in the 90s.

High school was early 2010s. For high school I remember there is actually AP Physics 2 E&M now, but I know for a fact it's offered at very few schools compared to the other AP tests. Middle schools are much less standardized class-wise from what I can tell (even within regions) and even though mine was extremely math and science heavy we didn't cover any E&M unfortunately.

There is an associated lab manual, which also includes a more basic introduction to the fundamentals:

https://learningtheartofelectronics.com/

Note that the last third is about building a small computer from scratch, but the presentation is a bit obsolete.

> But good luck even reading the first few pages if you don't know the basics yet.

I disagree. Page 1 section 1.2: Voltage, current, and resistance. Section 1.2.2: Relationship between voltage and current: resistors. Section 1.2.2 B: Resistors in series and parallel. Section 1.2.3: Voltage dividers. Section 1.2.4: Voltage sources and current sources.

If those aren't the absolute basics, I don't know what is. Yes, it's not "Soldering for Dummies", but that's not what OP was asking for.

This is not a book for beginners.

An excellent reference manuscript, I wouldn't recommend it to beginners though