As someone who's always dabbled in electronics, skimmed and read some books, my primary complaint abot most electronics texts is that they just talk about individual topics: oscillators, amplifiers, etc.
What they never talk about, is putting them all together.
But as witnessed by this list, that's what a radio is. A collection of these "meta" components into a whole to get a better radio experience.
A radio built like this, with individual subsystems connected together, is much more understandable. Many (not all) radio schematics are presented as a whole, rather than the parts, or why you might (or might not) want to change one part or another (not components, but one, say, filter circuit to a different one).
It just seems to me that once you get past some basic theory, starting with a radio, and then systematically taking it apart is a better way of approaching electronics education.