First you need a compiler. IMO the best thing to use is GCC, the GNU compiler, on linux. It will force you to learn how to write your makefiles and you'll get more exposure to linking. If you're committed to windows there is Microsoft Visual studio, but this is not my domain. I remember using an IDE called Dev-C++, a free software, in college and it can compile C. But by sophomore level courses we were using GCC. If you're running Mac OS X you can get GCC using the brew package manager.

Then you need a 'resource' that will help you. C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Kernighan and Ritchie is an excellent resource. Its dry and to the point and it makes for a good reference later on. I'm sure there are a lot of free online classes and tutorials to get you started as well.

One thing I will say is that C is a great language to learn, but you can't do much with it without a good understanding of data structures and algorithm analysis. I assume you'll be in a systems level (firmware, kernel, driver) of abstraction. Here you have to be resource conscious and usually don't have space for bloated libraries or inefficient routines. That's why an understanding of data structures and algorithms is key to writing efficient code and will take you much further than just understanding the languages syntax and structure.

Not necessarily 'projects' as such, but if you want to get a feel for how the most respected gurus spend their time, it's hard to find better books than the two "Art, Science, Personalities" books edited by the late Jim Williams of Linear Tech. First Second

The best personal projects always start with a healthy intellectual curiosity, and that, in turn, comes from having good sources of inspiration. That's what these particular books are good for.

I have a EE undergrad degree and work as a software developer (mostly web development).

Best advice is to code as much as possible. I second @jewdai's recommendation to study data structures and algorithms -> learning these will give you a solid toolset for solving problems (w/ code) in the future. The bible for data structures and algorithms is:
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press/dp/0262033844/ref=zg_bs_132570011_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=G4V554CGYNTY1J7NT6AZ

You should investigate what type of industry you're interested in. If you're interested in signal processing, check out companies that specialize in that area (I guarantee they need software developers).

Best chance for getting an entry level position would be one where you can leverage your EE expertise, but spend most of your time programming (it's the only way to get better). Working on an embedded system (e.g. firmware) might be a good fit because you need solid EE knowledge as well as software skills.

I would also leverage my alumni network; talk to your classmates fellow grads who are in software now. Get their advice and network; those connections can lead to jobs (or at least interviews at their companies).

Best of luck!

It really depends on whether you want a nice soldering iron or just something that will allow you to try it for a few hours. There is a huge price difference. Of course there is also a huge difference in quality. You could get a very nice iron like this for around $250. Or you could get something much less expensive, like this for around $40.

The first one I listed is very similar to one of the best irons I've ever used. The second one is still head and shoulders above the piece of crap I used for the first several years I was soldering. It was like this, at around $5, and as long as I kept the tip sharpened with a file it worked pretty well.

Im a sophomore EE but I love books. Check out
Code
as well as classic physics books such as Theory of Relativity.
And a solid up to date formula handbook

and then specific books to your sub-field/concentration. I worked at a library and Barnes & Noble for a few years, and I highly suggest just living in the science department there when not at school and find books you love.

This isn't a textbook, but this is one of my favorite down to earth books about computing and electronics I have ever read. My physical computing teacher gave it to me as a gift. It is called Code and it's very cool, and pretty cheap. It's well written too.

My understanding is that placing the caps on the other side of the board isn't optimal, but will work, so long as you remember to keep the connections low inductance.

As for the value, it's partly determined by the frequencies you'll see in the circuit.

When considering the frequencies of the board it's best to look at periodic high frequencies, like clocks. But remember, because the clocks are "square waves" not sine waves there are a lot of higher order frequencies contained in them. Take the Fourier transform of a trapezoidal wave to see what I mean. These higher order frequencies are the ones you need to worry about.

0.1uF is good for circuits that are lower frequency, above 100MHz or so a lot of engineers will use 10nF or smaller caps for decoupling.

Check out a book on EMC for more information. [This] (http://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Compatibility-Engineering-Henry-Ott/dp/0470189304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333128646&sr=8-1) one contains a lot of good information of board design.

Edit: One thing I think forgot to mention is that you should generally route power and ground first. If you're using planes on inner layers this is really easy, if not try to make a grid of power traces on one side and ground on the other. This is because each parallel connection you have that is far enough apart to minimize the mutual inductance will reduce the overall inductance. At it's limit this becomes a plane.

Once you have your power and ground routed then do the clocks, then the digital signals.

This does not address the issues with analog signals on the board, as they should be segregated from all digital circuitry and power supplies.

Not sure about EE-related topics, but for CE you're almost guaranteed to use these textbooks:

• Computer Organization: Patterson and Hennessy.
  
• Computer Architecture: Hennessy and Patterson. Same people as the computer organization textbook, but this one goes a bit deeper into architecture.
  
• Algorithms: Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein, AKA CLRS. Standard algorithms textbook for 99% of CS/ECE algorithms courses.
  
• C: Kernighan and Ritchie, AKA K&R. Ritchie is the original creator of C and a co-creator of Unix, so this content comes straight from the source.
  
• C++: Stroustrup. Like Ritchie, he's the original inventor of C++.
  
  And of course, the most important and useful textbook of them all for almost anything coding-related.

Yuuuuup, feeling the same way except i think i'd like to get more into the microcontroller/FPGA field of EE.

I ended up getting this book a while ago and it's actually been quite helpful in explaining things in a manageable and very equation-lite way. Definitely gonna need another source for more in-depth but for the basics it's quite good.
Something like this would also be good to have for reference.

Suggested Steps

• Buy a cheap board from Altera or Xilinx.
  (I suggest Terasic which use Altera. They make some good entry level boards.)
  
• Decide on either Verilog or VHDL (I suggest Verilog)
  
• Know that you can do simulation online without installing anything (Well a browser)
  https://www.edaplayground.com/
  
• Download the tool suite from the vendor (Altera Quartus)
  
• Read some books and vendor technical material
  http://www.fpga4fun.com/FPGAinfo1.html
  https://www.altera.com/support/training/university/overview.html
  
• View some online presentations
  https://www.altera.com/support/training/curricula.html
  
• Get a handle of a vendor's specific flow and what all the various file types and programs are for
  
• Fool around and try things
  
  Books
  
  Digital Design and Computer Architecture, Second Edition
  May not be what you want, but I like it because it takes primitives and builds up a RISC processor.
  https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Computer-Architecture-Second/dp/0123944244/
  
  Pong P. Chu's books are very practical. He covers both Verilog and VHDL for Xilinx and Altera FPGAs.
  https://www.amazon.com/Pong-P.-Chu/e/B001ITRMEY/
  
  Advanced Chip Design, Practical Examples in Verilog (Best Practices)
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1482593335/
  
  FPGAs!? Now What?
  http://www.xess.com/static/media/appnotes/FpgasNowWhatBook.pdf
  
  Free Range VHDL
  Raw files
  https://github.com/fabriziotappero/Free-Range-VHDL-book
  PDF (The latest can be found on the free range website)
  http://www.gstitt.ece.ufl.edu/vhdl/refs/free_range_vhdl.pdf
  
  
  
  Prior Posts
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/451e7z/can_fpga_be_self_taught/czusnlc
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/2c513h/can_someone_explain_to_me_the_advantages_of_an/cjc18pg
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/1wqd34/can_someone_explain_to_me_the_fpga_design_process/cf4fqhy
  https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/1wqd34/can_someone_explain_to_me_the_fpga_design_process/cf4jw2i

Here's some lighter reading I've liked:

• Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities
  
• The Chip : How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
• Feynamn Lectures on Computation
  
  Readable, but more hardcore
  
  Hardware:
  
  
• The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, Second Edition
  
  
  Mathy:
  
  
• A New Kind of Science. I liked this book a lot, it is worth the price just for the interesting pictures. Make up your mind for yourself, and don't let negative reviewers unduly influence you.
  
• Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
  
• Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms
  
  
  Programmy:
  
  
• Mastering Regular Expressions
  
  Unixy:
  
  
• Unix Power Tools
  
  
  Off the wall:
  
  
• Molecular Biology of the Cell
  
  

Some poking around on Amazon, starting from the page for the Cunningham text recommended by redditor EbilSmurfs which was thoroughly panned by Amazon customer reviews, I found this book. It is Alexander's Fundamentals of Electric Circuits and received almost uniformly 5-star reviews. Most reviewers noted its clarity of exposition, which made it appropriate and useful for self-study. Also noted was the high correlation between material covered in a section and the concepts needed for the section exercises that followed at the end of the chapter. It is a McGraw-Hill textbook, and one reviewer noted that the book format is chapters divided into sections, worked examples after every section, review questions with answers at the end of the chapter, exercises grouped by section also at the end of the chapter, and then more end-of-chapter exercises that combined all the concepts covered in the chapter.

Almost bought it on impulse; added it to my wishlist, instead. While typing this, I noticed that redditor lordloss also recommended this text, which his school uses.

The current 4th edition is $155 at Amazon; the second edition can be had for $12 through Amazon Marketplace; the second edition was also found on Google Books.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of The Art of Electronics.

HTH.

Make sure you have the emails/phone numbers of the Support or Application Engineers and FAEs from different component vendors (Philips, Xilinx, Altera, TI, Analog Devices, Samtec, etc). Also, keep in touch with part distributors (Avnet, Arrow, Future, etc) since they also have local Application Engineers.

Yes, they'll only help you if you use their products, but for the most part they will be fine.

As u/j_lyf mentioned, look at Application Notes and White Papers from manufacturers since they are pretty much recipe books for specific designs (chips, power bricks, connectors, etc).

Consider buying the book Signal and Power Integrity by Eric Bogatin.

Also, are you in the SF Bay Area? Registrations for PCB West (September) are already open. If your boss has the budget, ask him for money to take the paid courses. Or at least attend the free ones.

I'm mostly self-taught, so I've learned to lean heavily on App Notes, simulations, and experience, but I also like these books:
The Howard Johnson Books:
High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133957241/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I0Iwyb99K9XCV
High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic
https://www.amazon.com/dp/013084408X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_c3IwybKSBFYVA

Signal and Power Integrity - Simplified (2nd Edition)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0132349795/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_J3IwybAAG9BWV

Also, another thing that can be overlooked is PCB manufacturability. It's vitally important to understand exactly what can and can't be manufactured so that you can make design trade offs, and in order to do that you need to know how they are made. As a fairly accurate intro, I like the Eurocircuits videos:
http://www.eurocircuits.com/making-a-pcb-pcb-manufacture-step-by-step

Amazing? These look like they were swiped from an overview lecture, there isn't any really good explanation in here. If this is all new to you they might be a good starting point for learning some basic concepts and vocabulary of signal integrity.

Johnson's Black Magic book is the general reference for this. There are many other (well written) white papers out there. Ott and Bogatin have good books as well.

I really liked this text when I was taking circuits:
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Electric-Circuits-Charles-Alexander/dp/0077263197/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319959923&sr=1-1

(older versions of the text are good; I used the 3rd edition). Everything is pretty clear & straight forward in that text.

Bebop to the Boolean Boogie. Amazing book by a great author and a fun read.

Have you read the good book?. Joking aside, Code is an amazing book, which really tied alot of things together conceptually for me.

edit: My god I need to make a reddit bot, those are cool.

-----
-----

BOOKS

Children Electronics and Electricity books:

• "Electricity for Young Makers" by de Vinck.
  
  
• "Make: Easy Electronics" by Platt. (12 experiments)
  
  
• "Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity!" by Dahl.
  
  
• "Electronics For Kids For Dummies" by Shamieh. (13 experiments)
  
  Newbie Electronics books:
  
  
• "Make: How to Use a Breadboard" by Ragan and Culkin. (10 experiments)
  
  
• "Make: Electronics" by Platt. (34 experiments)
  
  
• "Make: More Electronics" by Platt. (36 experiments)
  
  
• "Lessons in Electric Circuits - Volume VI - Experiments" by Kuphaldt. (free book)
  
  
• Series "Engineer's Mini-Notebook" booklets by Forrest Mims. (download archives)
  
  
• List of books about 555-series Timer ICs on Wikipedia.
  
  Basic Circuit Theory books:
  
  
• "Electrical Circuit Theory and Technology" by Bird. (download old edition)
  
  
• "Introductory Circuit Analysis" by Boylestad. (download old edition)
  
  
• Series "Lessons In Electric Circuits" by Kuphaldt. (free books)
  
  
• List of books about Diodes, Transistors on Wikipedia.
  
  Analog Design books:
  
  
• "Microelectronic Circuits" by Sedra and Smith. (download old edition)
  
  
• "Electronic Devices and Circuit Theory" by Boylestad and Nashelsky. (download old edition)
  
  
• List of books about Operational Amplifier (OpAmp) ICs on Wikipedia.
  
  
• List of books about LM-series Analog Linear ICs on Wikipedia.
  
  Digital Design books:
  
  
• "Digital Fundamentals" by Floyd. (download old edition)
  
  
• "Digital Design: Principles and Practices" by Wakerly. (download old edition)
  
  
• "Digital Design: with Introduction to Verilog, VHDL, SystemVerilog" by Mano and Ciletti. (download old edition)
  
  
• "Digital Design and Computer Architecture" by Harris and Harris.
  (download old edition)
  
  
• List of books about 7400-series TTL Digital Logic ICs on Wikipedia.
  
  
• List of books about 4000-series CMOS Digital Logic ICs on Wikipedia.
  
  Digital Signal Processing books:
  
  
• "Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing" by Smith. (download or online)
  
  Computer Design books:
  
  
• List of books about
  6502,
  6800,
  6809,
  8080,
  8085,
  Z80,
  68000,
  x86
  processors on Wikipedia.
  
  
• List of books about
  8051,
  ARM,
  AVR,
  PIC,
  RISC-V
  microcontrollers on Wikipedia.
  
  Electronics Reference books:
  
  
• "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. (download example chapter)
  
  
• "The Art of Electronics - The X Chapters" by Horowitz and Hill. Shipping in 2020.
  
  
• "ARRL Handbook" by various ARRL authors. (download very old edition)
  
  Historical books:
  
  
• "The Intellectual Rise In Electricity - A History" by Park Benjamin in 1895.
  
  
• "Electricity - It's History and Development" by William Durgin in 1912.
  
  
• "Bibliographical History of Electricity & Magnetism" by Paul Mottelay in 1922.
  
  
• "History of Communications Electronics in the United States Navy" by Linwood Howeth in 1963.
  
  -----
  -----
  
  

  MAGAZINES
  

  
  Current Electronics Magazines: (subscribe now)
  
  

• "Circuit Cellar"
  
  
• "Elektor"
  
  
• "Everyday Practical Electronics"
  
  
• "Nuts & Volts"
  
  Historical Electronics Magazines: (archives)
  
  
• "Electronics Today"
  
  
• "Everyday Electronics"
  
  
• "Popular Electronics"
  
  
• "Practical Electronics"
  
  
• "Radio Electronics"
  
  Historical Computer Magazines: (archives)
  
  
• "Byte" - 2nd group
  
  
• "Dr Dobb's Journal"
  
  
• "Interface Age"
  
  

• "Kilobaud"
  
  -----
  

Buy a book on Verilog or VHDL along with a Spartan 3 dev board and work through the examples over the holidays. If it totally excites you (as it does me) then you’ll know! I did just this with this book, which I love:

https://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-Verilog-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185325

Also there’s a VHDL book from the same author with the same material, just VHDL examples

Try this book : [Analog Circuit Design - Art, Science and Personalities] (https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Circuit-Design-Personalities-Engineers/dp/0750696400) - for some great 'in the trenches' stories from world class designers.

On a lighter note, if you happen to join an IC design team in the future which mostly consists of 55+yo veterans you are in luck : These guys are all about regaling the kids with their war stories about how they added a single MOSFET in exactly the right place and saved the day - whether you care to listen or not.

For what it's worth, the book that kickstarted my interest and understanding in digital electronics was a weird little book called Bebop to the Boolean Boogie. The one I read was the first edition; I stumbled on it randomly on a bookshelf (back when we had these things called bookstores; get off my lawn).

It managed to be a perfect mix of entertaining and informative, and helped the concepts sink in.

Read a book that approaches computer architecture from an implementation prospective, something like Digital Design and Computer Architecture

Take something relatively simple and like RISCV and read the ISA spec.

Using this spec figure out what state the machine defines. What registers must you keep track of in order to be ISA compliant. Implement the basic machine state.

Figure out what you need to do to implement specific operations. What information is encoded in all the fields of the instruction. What state is modified. Like for ADDIU: what does it mean to add unsigned add immediate, where is the immediate stored, what register do you read, what do you write? Implement a single instruction.

Writes tests, start implementing more of these operations. Learn about the rest of the ISA features (memory handling, exceptions). Implement this is any language. Try running small hand written assembly programs in your simulator, try larger programs.

There seems to be two approaches to learning DSP: the mathematically rigorous approach, and the conceptual approach. I think most university textbooks are the former. While I'm not going to understate the importance of understanding the mathematics behind DSP, it's less helpful if you don't have a general understanding of the concepts.

There are two books I can recommend that take a conceptual approach: The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, which is free. There's also Understanding Digital Signal Processing, which I've never seen a bad word about. It recently got its third edition.

You may consider a hobbyists book to start with, something like this Eagle Book
or this user
But for the real details I recommend this book or similar

Besides knowing the tools you really only need to know Tx Line analysis and (Signal/Power) Integrity information. Which may be some of the most important details to PCB design in my very limited opinion.

It's verilog based but I like ciletti, mano, and patterson:

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Digital-Design-Verilog-HDL/dp/0136019285

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Introduction-Verilog-HDL/dp/0132774208

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fifth-Architecture/dp/0124077269

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0124077269/ref=pd_luc_rh_ebxgy_01_01_t_img_lh?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I just went through a project course and here were some good project ideas:
Conway's game of life with VGA/LEDPanel
Single Cycle CPU
2D convolution with Systolic Arrays (really cool)

Oh? First year EE student? That's cute. Go buy a copy of this book right now, and don't wait 'til after completing a BS to brush over important concepts. This was singlehandedly more comprehensive than most of my individual courses.

For an introduction to FPGAs, protocols, and VHDL/Verilog I would highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317

(or the equivalent Verilog book - Chu does two versions)

This is an excellent book for learning how to interface with peripherals and work with different protocols.

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: the good book?


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|




This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

Highspeed Digital Design by Graham and Johnson is more focused on high speed digital signals, but most of it applies to low speed as well. It has a ton of good "engineering rules of thumb" when it comes to doing PCB design.

Strictly speaking in terms of bang for buck, I like Robert's courses. They are Altium-centric, of course, but the concepts he teaches will apply to any tool.

http://www.fedevel.com/academy

I highly recommend one book if you don't have it in your library, Henry Ott's EMC engineering...it served as a constant reference for me in the lab:

https://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Compatibility-Engineering-Henry-Ott/dp/0470189304

WLC100 is a great cheap soldering station.

Well, if you want to become an engineer, you'll need to go to college. After you get your prereqs out of the way, the first courses you'll take will be something like Circuits 1 and 2, covering RLC circuits and basic transistors, opamps, etc., and a digital course covering logic gates, flip-flops, etc. Later on, you'll get into Fourier and Laplace transforms, more analog and digital, and elective subjects based on your specialization.

Typical books:

Circuits: http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Electric-Circuits-Charles-Alexander/dp/0077263197

Digital Design: http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Logic-Design-Companion-CD-ROM/dp/0495471690

The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing is a pretty decent book as a crash course. It covers the high level concepts in the first half and the hard core math at the very end.

In the middle there’s a chunk of stuff that’s very practical if you don’t have the time to learn all the math behind it. This is the stuff that I found most useful. It covered the various filters, why you would use one over the other, and basic implementations.

If you really want to learn DSP, a course might be useful but it all depends on what you want from it.

This is an amazing book that describes how computers work from the ground up. Petzold basically starts with switches and relays and moves all the way up to processors and displays. At the end of that book, you'll have the same general knowledge as a second year EE/CE.

I have just started reading "Code" by Charles Petzold. I think this book would have been a godsend when I was just starting out.

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Dv-Undefined-Charles-Petzold/dp/0735611319/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219981358&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Everything-Probably/dp/0123860016

"Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School...but Probably Didn't"

Find it in a library or pick it up. Solid review book that discusses concepts and reasoning but isn't just a bunch of problems. Chapter 0 and 1 alone have paid for the book many many times over in my career.

Pickup an old (two or three revisions back) FE study guide. The PPI books have tons of review books but the FE is very thorough.

Check out https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/education/ . Find some blogs that discuss the specialty that you are wanting to pursue.

When interviewing, make sure you speak through your thought process. People want to get an understanding of how you approach problems.

Being a EE fits many problems that people are looking to hire for. Don't limit yourself.

Godspeed, Good luck (you make your own) and good hunting.

Before taking one really good course at my home university, I was self-tought using only this book: http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1412842171&sr=8-4&keywords=vhdl

Here is what my school uses, I liked it:

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Electric-Circuits-Charles-Alexander/dp/0077263197/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320377969&sr=1-3

I was thinking about using Designing Analog Chips by Hans Camenzind along with The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz as a guide for projects to do. I also recognize its important to know to design digital electronics (even though it may not necessarily be my strength) and know how to do research if I do end up doing the PhD so I was also looking into these books: link 1, link 2, and link 3. Are there any other books I should look into?

http://valentfx.com/

Either the LOGi-Pi or the LOGi-Bone, with the LOGi-EDU package.

The EDU package is built to allow you to follow the examples in either one of these books:

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-Verilog-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185325/

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317/

There's also a bunch of demos on their wiki.

I had this same dilemna a week ago. I had NO knowledge of how to program on fpgas at all, so my choice was mainly based on how much documentation was available at the time. For this reason I decided to purchase the nexys 2 with the spartan 3E. This was the best book I found for programming with fpgas, and it uses the spartan 3. In hindsight, I might have been able to use a spartan 6. I'm not entirely sure.

As a reference book AofE is fine, but the one that really helped make everything "click" in my mind was Electrical Engineering 101 https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Everything-Probably/dp/0123860016

http://www.amazon.com/Signal-Power-Integrity-Simplified-2nd/dp/0132349795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463916853&sr=8-1&keywords=power+and+signal

Old (1993) but classic fundamentals that are still relevant today:
High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133957241/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_O05TBb9HPRG90

If you haven't bought the "Black Magic" books written by Howard Johnson (real name!), consider doing so.

• (Book 2 on Amazon)
  
  
• (Book 1 on Amazon)

I haven't yet designed boards with EMC and RF in mind. I've seen recommendations for the high-speed digital design books thrown around, though.

Personally, I found Oppenheim's text very dry and difficult to get through. I would recommend Lyons textbook.