Reddit reviews About Vectors (Dover Books on Mathematics)

i have three categories of suggestions.

advanced calculus

these are essentially precursors to smooth manifold theory. you mention you have had calculus 3, but this is likely the modern multivariate calculus course.

• advanced calculus: a differential forms approach by harold edwards
  
  
• advanced calculus: a geometric view by james callahan
  
  
• vector calculus, linear algebra, and differential forms: a unified approach by john hubbard
  
  out of these, if you were to choose one, i think the callahan book is probably your best bet to pull from. it is the most modern, in both approach and notation. it is a perfect setup for smooth manifolds (however, all of these books fit that bill). hubbard's book is very similar, but i don't particularly like its notation. however, it has some unique features and does attempt to unify the concepts, which is a nice approach. edwards book is just fantastic, albeit a bit nonstandard. at a minimum, i recommend reading the first three chapters and then the latter chapters and appendices, in particular chapter 8 on applications. the first three chapters cover the core material, where chapters 4-6 then go on to solidify the concepts presented in the first three chapters a bit more rigorously.
  
  smooth manifolds
  
  
• an introduction to manifolds by loring tu
  
  
• introduction to smooth manifolds by john m. lee
  
  
• manifolds and differential geometry by jeffrey m. lee
  
  
• first steps in differential geometry: riemannian, contact, sympletic by andrew mcinerney
  
  out of these books, i only have explicit experience with the first two. i learned the material in graduate school from john m. lee's book, which i later solidifed by reading tu's book. tu's book actually covers the same core material as lee's book, but what makes it more approachable is that it doesn't emphasize, and thus doesn't require a lot of background in, the topological aspects of manifolds. it also does a better job of showing examples and techniques, and is better written in general than john m. lee's book. although, john m. lee's book is rather good.
  
  so out of these, i would no doubt choose tu's book. i mention the latter two only to mention them because i know about them. i don't have any experience with them.
  
  conceptual books
  
  these books should be helpful as side notes to this material.
  
  
• div, grad, curl are dead by william burke [pdf]
  
  
• geometrical vectors by gabriel weinreich
  
  
• about vectors by banesh hoffmann
  
  i highly recommend all of these because they're all rather short and easy reads. the first two get at the visual concepts and intuition behind vectors, covectors, etc. they are actually the only two out of all of these books (if i remember right) that even talk about and mention twisted forms.
  
  there are also a ton of books for physicists, applied differential geometry by william burke, gauge fields, knots and gravity by john baez and javier muniain (despite its title, it's very approachable), variational principles of mechanics by cornelius lanczos, etc. that would all help with understanding the intuition and applications of this material.
  
  conclusion
  
  if you're really wanting to get right to the smooth manifolds material, i would start with tu's book and then supplement as needed from the callahan and hubbard books to pick up things like the implicit and inverse function theorems. i highly recommend reading edwards' book regardless. if you're long-gaming it, then i'd probably start with callahan's book, then move to tu's book, all the while reading edwards' book. :)
  
  i have been out of graduate school for a few years now, leaving before finishing my ph.d. i am actually going back through callahan's book (didn't know about it at the time and/or it wasn't released) for fun and its solid expositions and approach. edwards' book remains one of my favorite books (not just math) to just pick up and read.

For your calculus brush-up, I would wholeheartedly recommend Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson. Available as pdf here or a newer, revised edition from Amazon here in which Martin Gardner has updated terminology, notation and such, as well as adding some excellent introductory chapters that help with the intuition. It is a deceptively small book with around 300 A5 sized pages, but it delivers most everything you need to know about calculus, including many handy tricks, in a intuitive down to earth style. Each chapter has a bunch of problems of varying degree along with solutions in the appendix. To top it off, Richard Feynmann was introduced to calculus from this book too...

In my opinion, a solid and intuitive understanding of calculus is one of the most important aspect of understanding much of physics, and the book has certainly helped me a great deal.

Another important aspect is of course vectors, for which I enjoyed the slightly unusual treatment in About Vectors by Banesh Hoffmann, although I'm unsure if it is fitting for revisiting.