What Undervalued Books Have You Discovered?

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There is another book by John R. Taylor which doesn't get mentioned much anywhere:
Scattering Theory: The Quantum Theory of Nonrelativistic Collisions

I remember it to be really well-written. In principle, I think that it is a virtue that it doesn't include QFT because you don't get sidetracked from the fundamentals of scattering this way. The only drawback is that it has 500 pages so I didn't have the time to read much of it. ;-)
 
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kith said:
There is another book by John R. Taylor which doesn't get mentioned much anywhere:
Scattering Theory: The Quantum Theory of Nonrelativistic Collisions

I remember it to be really well-written. In principle, I think that it is a virtue that it doesn't include QFT because you don't get sidetracked from the fundamentals of scattering this way. The only drawback is that it has 500 pages so I didn't have the time to read much of it. ;-)
There are books with way more than 500 pages... :-D
 
Yes but it depends on how deep you can dig into a subject during university. Most books on quantum mechanics hardly spend any pages at all on non-relativistic scattering, so 500 pages are a lot.
 
kith said:
Not really undervalued in comparison to similar books but I know many phycicists who've never read a single book on its topic:
John Taylor - Introduction to Error Analysis

kith said:
There is another book by John R. Taylor which doesn't get mentioned much anywhere:
Scattering Theory: The Quantum Theory of Nonrelativistic Collisions

I remember it to be really well-written. In principle, I think that it is a virtue that it doesn't include QFT because you don't get sidetracked from the fundamentals of scattering this way. The only drawback is that it has 500 pages so I didn't have the time to read much of it. ;-)

Both of these books are on my shelf. I haven't completely read either, but I have read bits of both. When I was a grad student, my university offered a grad course on scattering, and Taylor was used as the text. I didn't take the course, but a friend did, and she gave me the book.
 
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George Jones said:
I ordered these books yesterday from amazon.com and was charged $29.08 and $28.83 respectively. Today, the prices are $116.95 and $115.70. (All prices in Canadian dollars; amounts would be less in US dollars.)
Ah! You might be tempted to resell them and make a hefty profit :-)

I hope you enjoy them, I now feel a bit responsible for suggesting them. Knowing you a bit, I fear the book by Garrity may be a bit too basic, but I still hope you will enjoy some of it.

Talking about QFT (since you mentioned wanting to learn more about it in another post), here is another book that I consider good and undervalued:

The conceptual Framework of Quantum Field Theory by A. Duncan.

He has a very original and deep presentation of the concepts of QFT.
 
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nrqed said:
I just got the two volumes by Manioukan, I am looking forward to reading them.

I would also not call Cohen-Tannoudji undervalued, it was even the textbook used in my undergrad QM one year class. Maybe it is less known in English speaking universities though.
Did you like the two-volume textbook on QFT by Manoukian?