Modern Control Systems (10th Edition) (ISBN 0131457330)

Dorf, a good book but bad problem sets:
This book has good explanations for learning the material, but the problems stink. My first controls class was under Kuo (Kuo & Golnaraghi, Automatic Control Systems), and this book has similar ordering of the material that I like. My students wanted more simple examples than Kuo's book had, unfortunately as I used this book I discovered that the problems are bad. They either give-away the answer by including all relevent equations, or they make the answer unobtainable by giving most of the equations but leaving out important aspects of the problem. For example, Ch4 p10 gives most the equation e=-ky, but that leaves the input R out of both the problem and the drawing; the equation should be e=r-ky. The solution key for this problem also finds a Torque (N*m) as the integral of a velocity (m/s); not getting the units right in a problem in the 10th edition is unacceptable! My impression was a group of new graduate students were sent out to develop a bunch of problems so a new edition could be printed, and what they came up with sometimes was simple (OK, you need easy problems to help develop confidence and understanding), and sometimes based on real systems (GREAT), but rarely clearly-presented and realistic. This is the fifth year I've taught this subject, and I worked in industry/research for 11 years before that. I know what a real controls problem looks like in the field. This book ALMOST did that part of it right, but the only way this is like horse shoes and and hand grenades is that it sometimes explodes in the students and professors face. Too bad, otherwise this would have been a great book with clear explanations and a good range of examples and problems.

OMG Are professors being paid to choose this book.:
This book is at best confuseing,,,At worst it is junk. I have read every page of this book at least twice. I still find some of the concepts impossible to understand. I will still get a b in the class. But at two hundred dollars per credit hour plus 150 for this trash. I got ripped.

From an Industrial Practitioner of Industrial Process Control:
This book is an excellent option for students taking their first course in Control systems. The topics are covered in a clear way, with many examples, and illustrations. This was one of the books I used back in college. The other one was Katsuhiko Ogata Modern Control Engineering. Both has been invaluable references. I am an Electronics Engineering graduate and I have been working for the last 16 years as an Instrumentation, Automation, and Process Safety and Control Engineer for the Oil & Gas Industry. This book will be a useful reference if you are working with or studying Control Systems.

The class' courseware is better:
The book is uninspiring to read. The book spends too much time discussing far flung control systems (space shuttle, airplanes), rather then working out examples. Where's the beef? Luckily the courseware in my class was better

Late Shipping:
The book was supposed to ship two day ground but showed up 3 days late.