The Secret Life of Circuits: An Illustrated Guide to Electronic Circuit Design - Hardcover

Michal Zalewski

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1718504802 ISBN 13: 9781718504806

Publisher: No Starch Press, 2026

Synopsis

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.

Real circuits don't behave the way textbooks say they do. The Secret Life of Circuits is a physics-first deep dive into why — covering not just the theory behind fields, charge, and signals, but the parasitics, coupling, ringing, noise, and failure modes that cookbook electronics education systematically ignores.

Michal Zalewski, a self-taught polymath who spent 11 years leading Google's product security program, brings hundreds of original diagrams, photographed experiments, and step-by-step mathematical models to bear on the real behavior of electronic components. The result is a book that builds working mental models rather than a collection of memorized rules — rigorous enough for working engineers closing gaps in their foundational knowledge, readable enough for makers and self-taught hobbyists who are tired of following tutorials they don't fully understand.

Inside the book, readers will find:

• Physical foundations of electricity developed from first principles, not hydraulic metaphors
  
• Detailed treatment of real-world component behavior: parasitics, tolerances, temperature dependence, and failure modes
  
• Hundreds of original diagrams, schematics, and photographs of actual lab experiments
  
• Mathematical models derived step by step, with intuitive explanations alongside the equations
  
• In-depth coverage of signals, noise, coupling, resonance, and other effects, demonstrated through photographed experiments
  
• Guidance on reasoning about unfamiliar circuits from fundamental principles rather than pattern-matching to known designs
  

About this title

About the Author

Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf) is a self-taught security researcher, electronics hobbyist, and robotics tinkerer. He spent 11 years at Google, where he built the product security program and led a team of roughly 100 engineers responsible for code audit, penetration testing, and vulnerability management across products from Gmail to self-driving cars. He is currently VP of Security & Privacy Engineering at Snap Inc. Zalewski has been named one of the 15 most influential people in security and one of the 100 most influential people in IT by eWeek, and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Pwnie Award.

He is the author of three previous books from No Starch Press: Silence on the Wire (2005), The Tangled Web (2011), and Practical Doomsday (2022). His electronics-focused Substack, lcamtuf's thing, covers circuit design from first principles and has attracted thousands of subscribers. Originally from Poland, Zalewski has lived in the United States since 2001.

Edition details

• Publisher: No Starch Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1718504802
• ISBN 13: 9781718504806
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 472