🚀 go-pugleaf

Let me add my (self-interested) comment on this:
My book:
  Eduardo D. Sontag,
  __Mathematical Control Theory: Deterministic Finite Dimensional Systems__
  Springer, New York, 1990. (396+xiii pages, ISBN 0-387-97366-4; 3-540-97366-4)

  Series: Textbooks in Applied Mathematics, Number 6.
  Hardcover, $39.00
  Order in USA from 1-800-SPRINGER (in NJ, 201-348-4033)

is geared towards people interested in learning basic linear systems but in
the context of NONlinear systems.  (Thus, many definitions and elementary
properties are given first abstractly; possibly TOO abstractly for many!).
Read this if you are interested in a careful mathematical exposition.
The book does NOT cover some "advanced linear" topics such as H-infinity
optimization, but it does prepare the reader for the WIDE area of control,
including things such as discrete-event systems, differential geometric
nonlinear methods, algebraic techniques, etc.

Table of contents, bibliography, and index are available electronically, for
free, from the SCAD Database in Systems and Control:
   ftp ftp.utdallas.edu, login anonymous, dir pub/scad
(lots of other things there as well).

Last note: Rugh (Johns Hopkins) just published a new book on Linear Systems,
and it seems to be excellent.  Also, Delchamps' book is good and covers
time-varying systems.  None of these were in the lists, I think.
-- 
Eduardo D. Sontag
Department of Mathematics
Rutgers Center for Systems and Control (SYCON)
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA

(Phone: (908)932-3072; FAX: (908)932-5530)
sontag@hilbert.rutgers.edu