Undergrad Thermal Physics recommendations

[HououinKyouma]

Hey guys, I have Thermal as a course in this (undergrad) semester and the teacher is very bad. Any book recommendations for me to study entirely on my own? This is what we have to cover in the course:

 

[vanhees71]

H. B. Callen, Thermodynamics and an Introduction to
Thermostatistics, John Wiley&Sons, New York, Chichester,
Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore, 2 edn. (1985).

 

[madscientist_93]

H. B. Callen, Thermodynamics and an Introduction to
Thermostatistics, John Wiley&Sons, New York, Chichester,
Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore, 2 edn. (1985).

Do you think the postulatory approach of Callen is a good way to learn thermodynamics ? I have heard that it is an outdated way of learning thermodynamics instead of building ground up from molecular physics and thermo statistics.

By the way, Robert H Swendsen ( a student of Callen ) has written An Introduction to Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics influenced by Callen's text.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198853238/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[vanhees71]

From a theoretical point of view that may be right. You can do everything without "phenomenological thermodynamics", just starting from the Liouville equation in mechanics, but I don't think that this is a good idea in the undergrad curriculum. Classical statistics is anyway a delicate subject, and I'd rather wait with statistical physics until after the QM 1 lecture and teach it right away as quantum statistics, with the classical statistics as the corresponding limit. On the other hand in the experimental-physical course you also have thermodynamics in the 1st semester, and for such a course, I don't know any better book than Callen.