Discovering Artistry in Textbooks: Find the Perfect Read

[micromass]

We had a thread about awful textbooks recently, but what about the converse? Which textbooks do you consider to be incredibly well-written, clear and (almost) flawless. Which books do you consider to be closer to a work of art than a science book.

It doesn't matter what topic it is or how advanced it is.

 

[AlephZero]

http://xp123.com/articles/review-structured-programming-dahl-dijkstra-and-hoare/

 

[ZombieFeynman]

Altland and Simons Condensed Matter Field Theory
Stone and Goldbart Mathematics for Physics
Landau's Classical Mechanics (Honorable Mention for his text on Statistical Physics as well)
French Vibrations and Waves
Zangwill Electrodynamics

 

[WannabeNewton]

Landau Lifshitz QM and stat mech
Reif stat mech
Wald GR
MTW
Kleppner and Kolenkow
Gourgoulhon SR
Griffiths electrodynamics

 

[johnqwertyful]

Fima Klebaner - Introduction to Stochastic Calculus

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1848168322/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Very accessible book on a fascinating topic, can't recommend highly enough.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

Landau Lifshitz QM and stat mech
Reif stat mech
Wald GR
MTW
Kleppner and Kolenkow
Gourgoulhon SR
Griffiths electrodynamics

Ugh. Reif is a decent book, but work of art it is not.

 

[atyy]

Landau Lifshitz QM and stat mech
Reif stat mech
Wald GR
MTW
Kleppner and Kolenkow
Gourgoulhon SR
Griffiths electrodynamics

MTW definitely doesn't belong on a list of books that are "closer to a work of art than a science book".

MTW is a work of art.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Ugh. Reif is a decent book, but work of art it is not.

Then we have to agree to disagree. Reif is one of the best physics books I've ever read. It's as close as I've ever gotten to getting pure joy from reading a textbook.

 

[WannabeNewton]

MTW definitely doesn't belong on a list of books that are "closer to a work of art than a science book".

MTW is a work of art.

Haha no arguments there, it is definitely something to worship.

 

[Jorriss]

Bender & Orszag is the best math methods book in my eyes.

Pugh Real Analysis, Carothers Real Analysis, Simon & Reed FA Vol 1, Lee Topological manifolds and Janich Topology are all exceptional math texts.

Tuckerman Stat Mech
Kleppner CM
Zettili Quantum Mechanics
Sakurai Quantum Mechanics

The two best textbooks I've ever used are actually organic chemistry texts - they are perfect:
Clayden, Greeves, Warren, Wothers- Organic Chemistry
Kurti, Czako - Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis

 

[micromass]

Carothers Real Analysis,

Definitely one of my favorite books.

Simon & Reed FA Vol 1,

The sequels are on much more esoteric topics, but really are as good. I love the various examples and counterexamples in the text.

Lee Topological manifolds

All of Lee's books deserve to be up there in my opinion. Some say they are too slow, and perhaps they're right, but I really like them.

Other choices: Steen & Seebach's Counterexamples in Topology (not really a textbook though). Conway's book on operator algebra's is also exceptionally nice. The functional analysis text by Brezis also deserves to be up here. Finally, it's not really an official textbook, but these notes deserve mention: http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/

 

[ShayanJ]

Solid state physics
Grosso and Parravichini

Quantum Mechanics:An introduction
Greiner

Principles of optics
Born and Wolf

 

[Delly]

Considering the books of elementary mathematics, I do think that the series by Gelfand et al. are extraordinary, especially Algebra, Trigonometry, The Method of Coordinates and Functions and Graphs. Moreover, one of the first well-structured books is a classic by Euclid,The Elements, even though the original list of axioms is not exhaustive and there are some downsides in defining the primitive terms.

My favourites are listed there.

 

[George Jones]

We had a thread about awful textbooks recently, but what about the converse? Which textbooks do you consider to be incredibly well-written, clear and (almost) flawless. Which books do you consider to be closer to a work of art than a science book.

I couldn't think of any books to include in your "Which textbook not to read?" thread, i.e., you convinced me that I am not critical enough.

Now I am having difficulty thinking of books for this "Awesome texts thread", i.e., you have now convinced me that I am too critical! Maybe I am just too MOR.

Scanning my shelves, I will say the broad and shallow pure maths book "Mathematical Physics" by Robert Geroch, and "Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations" by Chris Isham. Despite its title, the latter is definitely not a pure maths book.

Should I list a Weinberg book just to annoy someone?

 

[atyy]

Should I list a Weinberg book just to annoy someone?

Annoy? They are in the same league as Landau and Lifshitz, aren't they?

 

[atyy]

There's a book that's awesome but I don't remember the title or the author. I've been trying to find out what this lost book for a long time. Anyway, the reason I remember it is that it had this story:

The legislators of some planet decided that gravity was causing too much trouble, making things heavy to carry about. So they decided to repeal the law of gravity. Unfortunately, they forgot to also repeal the law of angular momentum conservation, so when the law was passed, everything went whizzing off the planet immediately.

 

[AlephZero]

Should I list a Weinberg book just to annoy someone?

Depends which Weinberg you mean. These are pretty good (though the specific examples are obviously dated now): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg

 

[WannabeNewton]

Should I list a Weinberg book just to annoy someone?

Don't you dare George!

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Bleh, I can't stand MTW. Books I like:

M. Nakahara, Geometry, Topology, and Physics
Serge Lang, Fundamentals of Differential Geometry
V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics

 

[mesa]

For an introductory Calculus text I recommend Anton's book. The craftsmanship lies in its pedagogical nature.

On a similar note, I wholeheartedly agree with those who listed James Stewart on the 'other' thread :)

 

[Curious3141]

I'm not really a (professional or formal student) in Math or Physics, just a keen amateur. But I found Mary L Boas' "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" to be an absolutely wonderful book. I bought it second hand from an engineering officer to read recreationally during my conscripted military stint prior to entering Medical School. Very concise, simply written, doesn't get bogged down with too much minutiae and "rigour" and has a very easy-flowing prose style, which is uncommon in a technical text. That was my first introduction to the Calculus of Variations and Lagrangians.

 

[Jorriss]

The sequels are on much more esoteric topics, but really are as good. I love the various examples and counterexamples in the text.
All of Lee's books deserve to be up there in my opinion. Some say they are too slow, and perhaps they're right, but I really like them.

That certainly could be the case, I have just never looked at them in any detail.

I don't know if you've heard, but Barry Simon has a whole slew of books on analysis coming out in early 2015 that may be added to this list.

 

[jbunniii]

I'll restrict my attention to analysis and algebra. (I've never met a topology book I liked much.)

I think analysis is inherently grungier than algebra, and I've never found a flawless book. Either we get a clean, abstract approach, where the author doesn't provide much motivation and the exposition is somewhat detached from anything classical/concrete (Rudin), or we get a grungy, let's-get-our-hands-dirty treatment where the proofs are trick-free but also tedious and you start wishing for a bit of that abstraction to clean up the arguments (say, Spivak, but at least his exposition is very insightful). Sometimes, we get abstraction without the beauty (Folland) or grunge without much insight (most analysis books).

A short list of analysis books that I think are well written, insightful, and strike a decent balance between the abstract and the concrete:

* Stein and Shakarchi's four volumes
* Bruckner/Thomson, both the undergrad and grad books
* Carothers
* Bartle, Elements of Real Analysis and his little Lebesgue book
* Berberian, Fundamentals of Real Analysis

For algebra, it's certainly possible to write unclearly or unpleasantly (Lang, Hungerford, anything with more commutative diagrams than text), but the subject seems inherently cleaner and less in need of being tied to anything "concrete". Or maybe that's just a matter of taste on my part. I don't particularly care if there is any non-mathematical application whatsoever of group theory, I love it for its own sake.

The three best-written books I've encountered on algebraic subjects:

* Rotman, Advanced Modern Algebra
* Roman [not Rotman], Advanced Linear Algebra
* Isaacs, Finite Group Theory

 

[JorisL]

[...]
V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics

I like the detail and various problems throughout the text a lot.

I do not like the style they use for chapter-section-subsection markup.(Is this the style used in all of the "Graduate Texts in Mathematics" series)
The sections just continue regardless of chapter.
I'd like it even more if it was like Part I, Chapter 1: Experimental Facts, Section 1.2: The galilean group etc.
Then in Part II, Chapter 8: Symplectic Manifolds, Section 8.3: The Lie algebra of vector fields.

Now it is Part II, Chapter 8, Section 39

I don't know why this bothers me, but it kinda does.

 

[jostpuur]

The Theory of the Riemann Zeta-function by E. C. Titchmarsh.

 

[Dr Transport]

Stratton's electromagnetics book
Yu and Cardona's Fundamentals of Semiconductors

EDIT:

Can't believe I forgot
Slater's Chemical Phyiscs
Seitz's Modern Theory of Solids

Stratton, Slater and Seitz are old, really old, but they explain the basics so that you appreciate what is actually being discussed. I use Stratton at work all the time, and read Seitz and Slater about every year or so to remind myself of the basics.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

Stratton's electromagnetics book
Yu and Cardona's Fundamentals of Semiconductors

EDIT:

Can't believe I forgot
Slater's Chemical Phyiscs
Seitz's Modern Theory of Solids

Stratton, Slater and Seitz are old, really old, but they explain the basics so that you appreciate what is actually being discussed. I use Stratton at work all the time, and read Seitz and Slater about every year or so to remind myself of the basics.

Yu and Cardona is a really excellent text. I'm interested in what you think of Chuang's Physics of Optoelectronic Devices.

 

[Medicol]

I am at present falling for "Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications" by Ricki Lewis, a concise, basic useful source of information. My favorite part in almost each of the chapters is true tales to tell about genetic diseases and exercises for me to practice albeit not so similar to those in my country's academic biology program at all. Mine are much harder , I am so worried that I will not be able to pass the exam

 

[Lavabug]

Cohen-Tannoudji's QM
Landau's Mechanics
Marsden/Tromba's Vector Calculus
MTW? I don't have a favorite GR book, but I've always felt very attached to this one and grab it whenever I find it at a library.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Altland and Simons Condensed Matter Field Theory

By the way I skimmed through this book and it certainly seems like nothing short of a true labor of love, with little biographical, historical, and informational details spread throughout. It is extremely professionally done. My question however is: exactly what kind of book is it? If you compare its contents to day those of Chaikin or A&M it certainly doesn't seem to go into much, if any, detail on condensed matter physics as far as the actual physics goes. It seems more like an introduction to aspects of QFT using stat mech. I mean the actual physics topics don't seem different from what you would find in e.g. Pathria. What are the prereqs for a book like this? I ask only because the book looks extremely fun to work through.

 

[kith]

Which books do you consider to be closer to a work of art than a science book.

Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming". It's a work in progress since 1962 and with TeX, Knuth invented his own typesetting system in order to make the book look like he wanted it to.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

By the way I skimmed through this book and it certainly seems like nothing short of a true labor of love, with little biographical, historical, and informational details spread throughout. It is extremely professionally done. My question however is: exactly what kind of book is it? If you compare its contents to day those of Chaikin or A&M it certainly doesn't seem to go into much, if any, detail on condensed matter physics as far as the actual physics goes. It seems more like an introduction to aspects of QFT using stat mech. I mean the actual physics topics don't seem different from what you would find in e.g. Pathria. What are the prereqs for a book like this? I ask only because the book looks extremely fun to work through.

Altland and Simon's is a book on the Quantum Field Theory of many body systems. It's not a substitute for a good solid state text like Kittel or A&M or C&L. I would say that it's very useful to have a background in solid state physics in addition to being very well-versed in QM and stat mech.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Altland and Simon's is a book on the Quantum Field Theory of many body systems. It's not a substitute for a good solid state text like Kittel or A&M or C&L. I would say that it's very useful to have a background in solid state physics in addition to being very well-versed in QM and stat mech.

Thank you! Just out of curiosity, although I think you've given me your opinion before elsewhere, do you have a CMT/Solid State book that you would consider to be a "work of art" or something close?

 

[ZombieFeynman]

Thank you! Just out of curiosity, although I think you've given me your opinion before elsewhere, do you have a CMT/Solid State book that you would consider to be a "work of art" or something close?

I don't, unfortunately. I think Kittel, A&M, and C&L are each good and bad in many ways. I learned solid state from A&M using a healthy amount of Kittel. It's both a beautiful and ugly subject and it's difficult to get a solely beautiful perspective that also does not leave out some of the ugly but important things.

 

[Dr Transport]

Yu and Cardona is a really excellent text. I'm interested in what you think of Chuang's Physics of Optoelectronic Devices.

Yeah, it is pretty good. Actually, it sits on the shelf right next to my copy of Yu and Cardona. It fills in the material from a more applied side, more towards what I do , so I tend to look at it a lot.

 

[whyevengothere]

Koks, Don Explorations in mathematical physics. The concepts behind an elegant language

 

[atyy]

Thank you! Just out of curiosity, although I think you've given me your opinion before elsewhere, do you have a CMT/Solid State book that you would consider to be a "work of art" or something close?

I know you weren't asking me, but I'll venture Xiao-Gang Wen's book, which quotes the Dao De Jing "The Dao that can be stated cannot be eternal Dao. The Name that can be named cannot be eternal Name. The Nameless is the origin of universe. The Named is the mother of all matter." and translates it "The physical theory that can be formulated cannot be the final ultimate theory. The classification that can be implemented cannot classify everything. The unformulatable ultimate theory does exist and governs the creation of the universe. The formulated theories describe the matter we see every day."

Here's a sampling from the book http://dao.mit.edu/~wen/book/preintro.pdf .

Bleh, I can't stand MTW. Books I like:

M. Nakahara, Geometry, Topology, and Physics
Serge Lang, Fundamentals of Differential Geometry
V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics

But maybe that's because you judge MTW as a textbook, whereas it is a work of art. It's great even if it is meaningless, just like Eliot's Four Quartets. Then of course one finds out that it is not meaningless (I think).

 

[ZombieFeynman]

I know you weren't asking me, but I'll venture Xiao-Gang Wen's book, which quotes the Dao De Jing "The Dao that can be stated cannot be eternal Dao. The Name that can be named cannot be eternal Name. The Nameless is the origin of universe. The Named is the mother of all matter." and translates it "The physical theory that can be formulated cannot be the final ultimate theory. The classification that can be implemented cannot classify everything. The unformulatable ultimate theory does exist and governs the creation of the universe. The formulated theories describe the matter we see every day."

Wen's book is a truly fantastic book, but I don't think it can be considered a "Solid State" text. It is a many-body book in the spirit of Altland and Simon, AGD or Fetter and Walecka. It is emphatically NOT in the spirit of Kittel or A&M. That's a good thing! But I think to really get much out of a book like Wen, it's BEST to have a traditional background in Solid State Physics.

Edit: Maybe I'm old fashioned (or maybe it's because I'm in a group which is actually well grounded by experiment), but I think to do condensed matter theory, you must have a rock solid intuition about classical band structure theory, the semiclassical theory of phonons, elementary treatments of magnetism, and crystal structures that you can't find in these fancy many body books. Wen's treatise is an aesthetic masterpiece, but to begin studying CMT there would be worse than suggesting one immediately starts learning E&M from Landau's Classical Theory of Fields (Or Jackson), rather than starting with Purcell or Griffiths.

 

[whyevengothere]

Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur by Stephen Blundell

 

[atyy]

Wen's book is a truly fantastic book, but I don't think it can be considered a "Solid State" text. It is a many-body book in the spirit of Altland and Simon, AGD or Fetter and Walecka. It is emphatically NOT in the spirit of Kittel or A&M. That's a good thing! But I think to really get much out of a book like Wen, it's BEST to have a traditional background in Solid State Physics.

Edit: Maybe I'm old fashioned (or maybe it's because I'm in a group which is actually well grounded by experiment), but I think to do condensed matter theory, you must have a rock solid intuition about classical band structure theory, the semiclassical theory of phonons, elementary treatments of magnetism, and crystal structures that you can't find in these fancy many body books. Wen's treatise is an aesthetic masterpiece, but to begin studying CMT there would be worse than suggesting one immediately starts learning E&M from Landau's Classical Theory of Fields (Or Jackson), rather than starting with Purcell or Griffiths.

Ha, ha, yes, the two books I've listed (MTW and Wen) are more like poetry than physics, and one definitely shouldn't use those as textbooks. Maybe Kaxiras https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521523397/?tag=pfamazon01-20, Mahan https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691140162/?tag=pfamazon01-20 and Mattuck https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486670473/?tag=pfamazon01-20? The first few chapters of Mattuck are really cute.

 

[dextercioby]

Sakurai and Ballentine for Quantum Mechanics. Ray d'Inverno's for GR. Pierre Ramond's text on QFT.

 

[vanhees71]

The trouble with Ramond's QFT text is that it's very formal. We had this as a textbook when learning QFT within the theory course. Only at the very end our professor realized that he had not even introduced the concept of a cross section, the S matrix, and all that. It's a lot of Euclidean QFT instead. It's a very good textbook if you want to learn about renormalization, particularly of gauge theories on a formal level. It's the perfect introduction to this topic but not to learn QFT as it is relevant for particle physics and other applications. Here the "awesome textbooks" are Weinberg's books: Starting from a physical motivation, i.e., the definition of a relativistic S matrix he explains in great detail, why QFT looks the way it does. It's also a bit hard as an introductory textbook (here I'd recommend Ryder instead), but if you like to know the (important) details about QFT, Weinberg's books are gems (as are all other of his textbooks like the two books on GR, gravitation, and cosmology, and non-relativistic QT).