Comment by agumonkey

I can only assume but culture makes things very different. I often said that French abstract algebra books stopped me from learning for 10 years (after many serious attempts). One book from Garreth Williams unlocked 80% of my issues. The shocking part was the approach. It was very operational, you calculate, you manipulate concrete data. In French books it's all theorems and concepts. Learning curve to make a Haskeller faint. And that book is not the only instance, Gilbert Strang lectures on youtube are also similar in style. It also correlates with the pragmatic engineering of US history (electricity comes to mind).