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    The Secret Life of Circuits

    An Illustrated Guide to Electronic Circuit Design

    Author Michal Zalewski
    Hardcover
    $39.99 US
    No Starch | No Starch Press
    8"W x 10"H | 13 oz | 24 per carton
    On sale Sep 22, 2026 | 400 Pages | 9781718504806
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 132-133
    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 136-137
    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 138-139
    A richly illustrated deep dive into how electricity and circuits really work — from the physics of charge and fields to the messy truth of real-world component behavior — by acclaimed security researcher and electronics obsessive Michal Zalewski.

    A physics-first guide to how electronic circuits actually work, from the motion of electrons to the moment a microcontroller does what you told it to.

    Real circuits don't behave the way most introductory books say they do. The hydraulic analogy breaks down at the transistor. Ideal component models ignore the parasitics that bite you in every practical design. Noise, signal reflections, and grounding mistakes go unmentioned, then ruin your first serious project. The academic textbooks have the answers, but they want a semester of calculus first.

    The Secret Life of Circuits is the book that fills that gap. Across 420 pages and roughly 290 hand-drawn color illustrations, Michal Zalewski builds working mental models from first principles: electron behavior in atomic shells, the operating principles behind op-amps and current mirrors, the discipline of digital logic, and the practical realities of PCB layout and high-speed signals. The math is here when you need it, derived step by step, but the goal is intuition you can use at the bench. No Laplace transforms, no plumbing analogies, no chapters on winding your own transformers.

    Zalewski has spent more than three decades designing circuits as a hobbyist and obsessive tinkerer. He draws schematics the way other people take notes. The illustrations in this book are the result: precise, generous, and printed in full color on a page that respects them. It's a book you'll keep within reach of a soldering iron and also leave out where guests can find it.

    For inquisitive hobbyists who hit a wall in the usual books, working engineers patching foundational gaps, and anyone who wants to stop following tutorials they don't fully understand.
    Michal Zalewski is a computer security specialist and an avid tinkerer with more than three decades of experience in electronic circuit design. He runs a popular, in-depth electronics blog and published a number of hardware projects featured on Hackaday and in other venues. He spent more than a decade at Google building its product security program and later served as VP of Security & Privacy Engineering at Snap Inc. He is also the author of two classic information security books—The Tangled Web and Silence on the Wire (both from No Starch Press)—along with Practical Doomsday, a guide to level-headed emergency preparedness.
    Michal Zalewski View titles by Michal Zalewski
    Introduction

    Part I: The Fundamentals
    Chapter 1: A Primer on Conduction
    Chapter 2: The Curious Case of Semiconductors
    Chapter 3: Time-Invariant Circuit Characteristics
    Chapter 4: Signals That Change Over Time
    Chapter 5: Ideal Inductors and Capacitors
    Chapter 6: Electronics at the Speed of Light

    Part II: Circuit Building Blocks
    Chapter 7: Voltage and Current Sources
    Chapter 8: Common Passive Components
    Chapter 9: Basic Electromechanical Devices
    Chapter 10: Discrete Semiconductors

    Part III: Exploring Analog Circuits
    Chapter 11: Creating Circuit Schematics
    Chapter 12: Arrangements of Passive Components
    Chapter 13: Applications of Diodes
    Chapter 14: Working with Transistors
    Chapter 15: Operational Amplifiers
    Chapter 16: Supply Regulation
    Chapter 17: Other Analog ICs

    Part IV: The Digital Realm
    Chapter 18: Logic Gates
    Chapter 19: Adders and Binary Math
    Chapter 20: Memory
    Chapter 21: Sequential Operations
    Chapter 22: Analog to Digital and Back
    Chapter 23: Clocks in Digital Circuits
    Chapter 24: Toward a Rudimentary Computer

    Part V: Software Eats the World
    Chapter 25: Exploring Microcontrollers
    Chapter 26: Talking to Peripherals
    Chapter 27: Hello, World

    Part VI: Making Your Dream a Reality
    Chapter 28: Surface-Mount Components
    Chapter 29: The Basics of PCB Design
    Chapter 30: High-Speed Signals
    Chapter 31: Electronics That Last

    Epilogue
    Index

    Photos

    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 132-133
    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 136-137
    The Secret Life of Circuits pages 138-139

    About

    A richly illustrated deep dive into how electricity and circuits really work — from the physics of charge and fields to the messy truth of real-world component behavior — by acclaimed security researcher and electronics obsessive Michal Zalewski.

    A physics-first guide to how electronic circuits actually work, from the motion of electrons to the moment a microcontroller does what you told it to.

    Real circuits don't behave the way most introductory books say they do. The hydraulic analogy breaks down at the transistor. Ideal component models ignore the parasitics that bite you in every practical design. Noise, signal reflections, and grounding mistakes go unmentioned, then ruin your first serious project. The academic textbooks have the answers, but they want a semester of calculus first.

    The Secret Life of Circuits is the book that fills that gap. Across 420 pages and roughly 290 hand-drawn color illustrations, Michal Zalewski builds working mental models from first principles: electron behavior in atomic shells, the operating principles behind op-amps and current mirrors, the discipline of digital logic, and the practical realities of PCB layout and high-speed signals. The math is here when you need it, derived step by step, but the goal is intuition you can use at the bench. No Laplace transforms, no plumbing analogies, no chapters on winding your own transformers.

    Zalewski has spent more than three decades designing circuits as a hobbyist and obsessive tinkerer. He draws schematics the way other people take notes. The illustrations in this book are the result: precise, generous, and printed in full color on a page that respects them. It's a book you'll keep within reach of a soldering iron and also leave out where guests can find it.

    For inquisitive hobbyists who hit a wall in the usual books, working engineers patching foundational gaps, and anyone who wants to stop following tutorials they don't fully understand.

    Author

    Michal Zalewski is a computer security specialist and an avid tinkerer with more than three decades of experience in electronic circuit design. He runs a popular, in-depth electronics blog and published a number of hardware projects featured on Hackaday and in other venues. He spent more than a decade at Google building its product security program and later served as VP of Security & Privacy Engineering at Snap Inc. He is also the author of two classic information security books—The Tangled Web and Silence on the Wire (both from No Starch Press)—along with Practical Doomsday, a guide to level-headed emergency preparedness.
    Michal Zalewski View titles by Michal Zalewski

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Part I: The Fundamentals
    Chapter 1: A Primer on Conduction
    Chapter 2: The Curious Case of Semiconductors
    Chapter 3: Time-Invariant Circuit Characteristics
    Chapter 4: Signals That Change Over Time
    Chapter 5: Ideal Inductors and Capacitors
    Chapter 6: Electronics at the Speed of Light

    Part II: Circuit Building Blocks
    Chapter 7: Voltage and Current Sources
    Chapter 8: Common Passive Components
    Chapter 9: Basic Electromechanical Devices
    Chapter 10: Discrete Semiconductors

    Part III: Exploring Analog Circuits
    Chapter 11: Creating Circuit Schematics
    Chapter 12: Arrangements of Passive Components
    Chapter 13: Applications of Diodes
    Chapter 14: Working with Transistors
    Chapter 15: Operational Amplifiers
    Chapter 16: Supply Regulation
    Chapter 17: Other Analog ICs

    Part IV: The Digital Realm
    Chapter 18: Logic Gates
    Chapter 19: Adders and Binary Math
    Chapter 20: Memory
    Chapter 21: Sequential Operations
    Chapter 22: Analog to Digital and Back
    Chapter 23: Clocks in Digital Circuits
    Chapter 24: Toward a Rudimentary Computer

    Part V: Software Eats the World
    Chapter 25: Exploring Microcontrollers
    Chapter 26: Talking to Peripherals
    Chapter 27: Hello, World

    Part VI: Making Your Dream a Reality
    Chapter 28: Surface-Mount Components
    Chapter 29: The Basics of PCB Design
    Chapter 30: High-Speed Signals
    Chapter 31: Electronics That Last

    Epilogue
    Index

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