Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook

Apart from Halliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics (Extended third edition), an intro text which I still reference in grad school, I would have to say my favorite is Shankar's Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Sure he's wordy, but he's descriptive. I found it easier to construct thought experiments in quantum mechanics after this text, and his mathematical approach seems...playful? Maybe it's just me, maybe it's the prof who taught it, but the big red book still sits by my desk.

Griffiths Intro Electrodynamics is the best physics book I have ever used. I learned more Calc from that than from my math classes, and it has those handy tables in the front and back.

I'll second the vote for Hecht. Also: Griffiths' "Introduction to elementary particles" and Shankar's "Basic Training in Mathematics: A Fitness Program for Science Student", a top-notch freshman/sophomore-level text covering calculus, differential equations, analysis, and linear algebra.

I'll second Shankar's Principles of Quantum Mechanics. I found it really readable and enjoyable, and he leaves nothing for granted.

For biology, I must say that my favorite is "Evolutionary Dynamics" by Martin Nowak. It's not a particularly thorough or rigorous treatment of the subject, but it's so easy and interesting at the same time that it doesn't really feel like a textbook at all.

Kittel and Kroemer, Thermal Physics. I have never done any thermal physics before or since, but it transformed a dreary required course into something magical (for me anyway).

Purcell, Electricity and Magnetism. I didn't appreciate how good this book was until I saw what a cockup every other author has made of the subject.

Misner Thorne and Wheeler. That one is more love-hate.

I like some of the physics texts mentioned, but hands down, far-and-away the best science textbook I've had--if I'm allowed to include math--is Michael Spivak's Calculus. In contrast to the cookbook approach of most calculus texts, it really serves as an introduction to the way mathematics is done. It's reasonably priced, and not filled with useless clip-art.

Most importantly, because it nominally covers the same material that most high-school texts cover, but in a completely different way, it serves as a good equalizer for first year college students--no matter how good your high school calculus was, you can probably learn something from Spivak.

thm:

Yeah, Spivak was the first thing that came to my mind. But I decided it wasn't fair game.

I'm glad to hear that there are other Shankar fans out there - I found it the best of a mediocre lot.

My favorite books actually have been on more advanced topcs. Hartle's Gravity is an amazingly readible text on general relativity. He builds the subject up from the basics of special relativity and has lots of good, clear examples along the way. It made the process of learning something about GR much less painful than I expected. Another fav has been Nielsen and Chuang's Quantum Computations and Quantum Information, both for its accessibility and the breadth of topics that it covers.

Kleppner/Kolenkow: Introduction to Mechanics
Spivak: Calculus on Manifolds
Riley/Hobson/Bence: Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering

At the moment, I'm very fond of Hartle's GR book. However, I'm teaching a class out of it right now, so it's probably a situational thing.

I have long quoted Osterbrock's Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nebulae as my favorite text, and while I don't own it yet, from what I've seen at conferences, the new edition by Ferland & Osterbrock looks even better. But is it really my favorite text? Dunno.

My favorite textbook is the intro astronomy text I'm going to write... someday.

I have to agree with Hecht (though I'm not sure how much of this is a result of my affinity towards the topic). Couldn't ask for more from a physics (both theory and applied) standpoint.

My sentimental favorite is Christman's Fundamentals of Soild State Physics, with it's bright red cover and differently-named variables from the rest of the field. And the afroementioned Griffith's E+M book. More recently in grad school, I've learned to love Ibach and Luth's Solid State Physics, and Eisberg and Resnick's Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles. There's also Davies' The Physics of Low-Dimensional Semiconductors, Bevington and Robinson's Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences, Bauer and Richter's Optical Characterization of Epitaxial Semiconductor Layers, and... God, I'm a dork.

I have to agree about Hartle's GR book. I have a normal copy and a photocopied draft version from when I took the class from him. It really helped me in grad level GR plus I got $0.25 for each mistake I found in the draft (I think I got 2 or 3 bucks for laundry money that quarter).

Also, I hated it at the time, but Kleppner/Kolenkow made upper division mechanics much easier for me.

My vote goes to Halliday and Resnick. Sure, it's intro level, but it covers so much so well that I still refer back to it from time to time.

I don't think you can beat the Feynman lectures.

Since no one has mentioned Feynman's books, I'll sing his praises today. While I would have hated to have taken the original class with the books, they're great for reference. When I couldn't figure out what Clebsch-Gordon coefficients were from Gasiorowicz, Feynman came to the rescue. When I was trying to understand how a SQUID worked, Feyman came to the rescue. The discussions of the ammonium maser and how thunderclouds work are great. The stories are also lovely.

I'd also vote for Ryder's Quantum Field Theory book. When I was taking quantum field theory, I found it more understandable than the other books that were recommended. Despite complaints from some serious field theory jocks, it was perfect for me.

I will give another vote for Griffith's E+M text. E+M was my favorite undergraduate subject, despite two different lecturers.

For grad level, I did not like any of the physics books I used, but I will certainly give a big yes vote to Binney & Tremaine's Galactic Dynamics. I would say it is also the book that I use the most since getting my Ph.D., which tells you it's influence on me.

The problem with the Feynman lectures was nailed by one of the QM profs I had in grad school, who said (paraphrased slightly:

"The problem with Feynman is you read it, and you say 'Yes! I understand this! I'm doing physics!' And then you try to solve a problem, and you find that, well, that you're not Feynman."

I haven't made extensive use of them, but every now and then, I look at his lectures, and there's some nice stuff there. But it's good in a really quirky sort of way, that you pretty much have to be Feynman to pull off, particularly in a class context.

My personal favorites have been...

-Kittel and Kroemer, Thermal Physics
-Purcell, Electricity and Magnetism
-Eisberg and Resnick, Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles
-Hecht, Optics

And one slightly unconventional book,
-A. R. Choudhuri, The Physics of Fluids and Plasma

Ooh, I also want to plug Chandler's Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics, even if it's written by *shudder* a chemist.

Is this an undergrad-text only thread? In that case, I agree that the Feynman lectures and the Griffiths E&M are my hands-down favorites. However, I find the graduate textbooks to by oodles more fun, Jackson excepted...

One of my favorite non-science textbooks (if it could be called that), would be "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements" by Eric Hoffer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

I haven't heard many instructors using it these days on a reading list.

I'll put in another vote for Halliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics (Extended third edition).

All time favorite definitely the Feynman lectures.
Number two Weinberg's "Gravitation and Cosmology".
These two were love at first sight.
Number three now MTW. I used to hate it, now I love it.
It took awhile to develop a good relationship with this book. The second half is a lot better than the first.
Finally Jackson, perhaps the highest quality of them all.
More than forty years later, these are the only textbooks I still use regularly.
Jim Graber

Kingery, Bowman, and Uhlman: Introduction to Ceramics

We ceramists call it "The Bible" for a reason!

(for the record, this is for engineering ceramics, not making pottery at home or something like that)

On the first day of my E&M class, my professor held up a copy of the Feynman Lectures, Volume II, and said something like the following: "This is a great book to read, but you can't learn E&M for the first time out of it." Which I found kind of odd, actually, because I had learned vector calculus out of it the summer before. If I hadn't had a day job and other such drains on my time, I'm sure I could have learned more. I know I don't have a Feynman-caliber brain, but I can't recall having any trouble learning stuff from the "red books" and applying it.

Now that the "definitive edition" has come out, with a fourth volume entirely devoted to problem-solving, I wonder if the perception of the Feynman Lectures will change.

My favorite is an organic chemistry textbook by Morrison and Boyd. It's pretty comprehensive, straightforward and easy to read, and also has a sense of humor - in the section where enantiomers are introduced, there's a bit where they say something like:

"Everything has a mirror image (except for vampires) but many molecules' mirror images are superimposable..."

How many science texts mention vampires?

My favorites, which are a bit all over the map:

Principles of Neuroscience, Kandel & Schwartz

Descriptive Physical Oceanography, Pickard & Emery

Evolution, Futuyma

Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, Carroll

Invertebrate Zoology, Ruppert & Barnes

Human Anatomy & Physiology, Marieb

My choice is definitely Introduction to Electrodynamics by Griffiths. The difference between this and most other intermediate/advanced books is that the text actually explains how to solve problems.

I commented in the 'least favorite text' thread, not realizing there were two separate threads. I have quite a few more favorite texts than hated ones.
I mentioned in the other thread that I like anything by Griffiths. Feynman's lectures are infinitely more valuable after you have learned a subject. Every time I feel like a have a good grasp of a topic, I go and see how Feynman explains it in his Lectures and then everything kind of falls into place, and I realize how little I understood before. And Landau is a master, although I haven't worked through any of his texts as thoroughly as I went through Mechanics. For me, Schutz did the same thing for GR (A First Course in GR) that Griffiths did for E&M. And for the math, I don't think you can beat Shilov's trilogy (Linear Algebra, Real & Complex Analysis, and Functional Analysis - all Dover reprints) and Byron & Fuller's Mathematics of Classical & Quantum Physics (also a Dover). My graduate experience is not very broad and was a bit abbreviated, but I really enjoyed Schwinger (et al)'s Classical Electrodynamics (unlike Jackson, you can actually venture in without Sherpa guides), Goldstein, and Peskin & Schroeder (as far as I got).
All in all, I'd say that we suffer from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to good physics textbooks (with the one glaring exception of SM - why is that?), although not all professors take the time to cull out the bad ones from their required book lists. As somebody else mentioned in the other thread, finding a text that speaks to you is a very subjective thing, and students should be advised early on that the best way to survive in a field like this is to learn their way around the literature, starting with textbooks. I think part of the problem is that many students feel constrained to stick with the texts their professors have assigned, and don't feel free to explore other texts, either because of a lack of time or fear that they won't learn the necessary tricks/problems that will allow them to pass tests, etc. The truth is that they would be much better served, even in the short run, abandoning a text that they just don't get for one that really resonates with them. Here I'm talking about the kind of 'not getting it' where you understand all of the steps, can solve the same problems the text does, but don't have a 'feel' for what you're really doing, and therefore can't extend what you've learned to different situations.
I must say I really enjoy this blog, especially when the topics don't stray far from the physics.

Undergrad, Purcell, Electricity and Magnetism: the book that made me want to be a physicist.
Grad school, Sakurai, Advanced Quantum Mechanics: everybody else makes field theory look sooo obscure and complicated, including the book that my AQM professor was using.
As a teacher: Loudon, the Quantum Theory of Light: Best discussion I know of of the Hanbury Brown Twiss effect and lots more.
I'd also like to make a plug for a book I never hear anybody talk about: Peebles, Quantum Mechanics. But I'm prejudiced because I had the man himself as a lecturer and read the original mimeographs.
I love the Feynman Lectures, but as someone already said, most of us are not Feynman and so I find I can only use it as a supplement. It makes imaginations soar though.

Another vote for Halliday and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics. (I forget which edition, but it was the last one to be hand-copied by monks onto papyrus scrolls.)

Molecular Biology of the Cell, by Alberts et al. hands down. Must be on it's fifteenth edition by now; I learned from the Big Black Third. Back in the day, all of us who were serious -- professors and graduate students -- read the entire thing, cover to cover, every couple of years. Seriously.

And besides, no need to apologize for non-physics books. As Per Bak once made clear to me, it's all physics, in the end....

Since no one's mentioned them so far, either of Goodman's books -- Fourier Optics, original edition, or Statistical Optics. Clear, well written books.

Anon