List of STEM Masterworks in Physics, Mechanics, Electrodynamics...

[boneh3ad]

You're agreeing with me. I stated a core us needed and should be kept. Beyond that, it is up for grabs as the material soon becomes outdated. Would you keep, e.g., books on Networking, Oop, A.I beyond the basic level for more than a few years? And I guess teaching quality may vary. I had several professors who had no office hours, graded no work, some times just came into class, wrote for an hour on the board and just walked out afterwards without a single exchange in the process. And I paid a high out-of-state tuition for sonething I could have taught myself. And, no, I don't believe schools should be training centers but the training and job- finding aspects should be considered too.

I am not agreeing with you due to what appears to be differing definitions of "basic level" in this discussion. In fact, I don't think "basic" is the correct way to describe the delineation between what is slowly-changing versus rapidly-changing. The better descriptor is "fundamental." Undergrads learn basic fundamentals and that is what their textbooks cover. Graduate students learn (in class) advanced fundamentals. It is still fundamental material and slowly-changing, but it certainly isn't basic.

So yes, I would say that, in general, textbooks still have a place now and will in the future. They won't necessarily be in the exact form they are in now, but their existence as compendia of fundamental technical knowledge on a subject that have been gathered by verified experts and organized/presented in a way that is (ostensibly) appropriate for teaching a specific audience will remain indispensable for the foreseeable future.

 

[WWGD]

Well then I guess my experience must be grossly unrepresentative. When I tried to sell my used grad texts in several areas ( which I had bought new and were just 3-4,years old) I contacted several used-book stores. Out of some 30 books ,I donated the majority and sold 2 for a whopping total of $7. No one offered a single penny for the other books. EDIT: This was in NYC and Boston, two large markets, some 5 years ago.

 

[boneh3ad]

That is a separate issue, though. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the textbook materials being scientifically out of date, and more to do with the fact that academic publishers are greedy and publish new editions that have primarily new example problems and only very minor content changes, and the end result is to make older editions nearly worthless for resale since future classes are using a different edition. The other issue is that graduate texts are more specialized and therefore have a lower demand. That does not mean the material is no longer scientifically accurate or useful.

 

[gmax137]

Not too long ago I moved cross country and thought I might as well use the opportunity to thin my book collection. I was moving from New England, where there are lots of used book stores (like at least a dozen within an hours drive). I checked around, they don't pay anything unless a book is really special. They are inundated by people trying to drop off boxes of books. I took 12 large boxes to my local public library for their annual booksale. If I have to give them away, at least it did the library some good.

If you want to get a better idea of a book's market value, look it up on one of the selling websites, don't go by what the sellers will offer you for it.

 

[Dr Transport]

If you want to get a better idea of a book's market value, look it up on one of the selling websites, don't go by what the sellers will offer you for it.

Look on Amazon to see what others are selling it for...

As for the to-down, bottom-up approach: Look at the Moore Method of Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_method, although he was a racist, it is a good method of bottom -up.

On another note: core material. Sure that doesn't change and I'd say that the current edition of Halliday and Resnik (and whomever is added onto that author chain), isn't significantly better than the 3rd ed I had in '83/84, the reason they put out new editions is in my estimation, flash, color diagrams etc... I was not impressed when I taught at the community college years ago when they said they were changing to something else. The reason, it looked nicer.

 

[vanhees71]

And I don't know in Germany, but in the US, people are hired as teachers in universities based on their ability to do research and bring in funding for the school, not for their ability to teach effectively. I can tell Zz is a dedicated teacher interested in his students but, frankly, many are not ,and this makes going to lectures a waste of time. At the pregrad or undergrad level , as you said, there is little room for experimentation and customization of the material. I see tweaking and experimenting as an essential aspect of learning and schooling as present in general does not in general allow for that.

That's the same in Germany, though there are many very dedicated teachers among the professors I know. When I was a student, it was very simple: If the lecture was bad, we simply didn't attend. There was no problem doing so, because all that counted was to get the final exams right (which consisted of four written exams for the "Vordiplom", usually taken after the 4th semester and in four oral exams at the end of the studies towards the "Diplom" + the diploma thesis, which was a first piece of research).

 

[WWGD]

In the US, some classes require assistance; there is roll call or a sheet of paper is passed around and students sign it. In some large classes this ends up taking up to 10% or more of lecture time. Funny that prof. seems exhausted after going through 60+ names, a bit short of breath aftetwards.I worked as a TA for a while . I voluntarily took speech and diction class to improve my presentation.

 

[Demystifier]

It's true that lecture notes are rarely as perfected as a good textbook.

Let me just note that, in my opinion, lecture notes by Tong are better than most textbooks.
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/teaching.html

 

[mathwonk]

a comment on selling grad level math books: when I retired and moved a few years ago, I found I could not sell my books to bookstores either. But it is not that they were outdated or not in demand. Indeed some were brand new, and several were simultaneously offered (used) for sale for hundreds of dollars by the same stores (Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, I'm talking about you) that offered me less than $5 or nothing at all for those same books. I closed them out quickly by offering them all for $5 each to students and faculty at my old math department. Of course I now regret selling them since in my retirement I have often missed some of them for reference, but it was very hard to move 3,000 miles with a LOT of books. and the students who got them are the future of our subject.

 

[Dr Transport]

It's even worse when selling to Half Price Books, you get about 50 cents/book. I'll go online and sell thru Amazon when I decide to pair down my collection.

 

[WWGD]

There are too, sites where you can barter , i.e., exchange goods. So you may trade in your books for other books, lamps, etc. I heard of these recently. Hope I can get a reasonable deal.

 

[fluidistic]

Shoenberg's Magnetic oscillations in metals is another bible, a well cited book.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I don't understand why would anyone be departed from his books? Just buy a bigger apartment. :-D

 

[BvU]

I don't understand why would anyone be departed from his books? Just buy a bigger apartment. :-D

You have to think ahead: your earthly books will be thrown away when you die. That's a huge waste !

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

You have to think ahead: your earthly books will be thrown away when you die. That's a huge waste !

Quantum Immortality baby!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality

In any case, if I'll die anyone can take whatever he/she/it pleases, I am not thinking of a will anyway...

 

[George Jones]

I don't understand why would anyone be departed from his books? Just buy a bigger apartment. :-D

Significant other. And don't say "Find another!"

I already have 500+ books at home. When I retire (in 6 to 8 years), most of the 500+ books in my office will make the trip to my house, but not all will. For example not all the first-year texts (I have the well-known ones, and some not so well-known ones) will make trip, nor will all my general astronomy books.

 

[fresh_42]

I just found this page of online textbooks:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

 

[jedishrfu]

Wow, there's a lot of indexed material. I even found an infamous manifesto.

 

[vanhees71]

...as well as

One Hundred Proofs That the Earth is Not a Globe

 

[jedishrfu]

However, I would be more worried about the infamous manifesto.

 

[Frabjous]

Trying not to duplicate anything
Some of these are dated

Whittaker A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies
Pars A Treatise on Analytical Dynamics
Routh Dynamics of a System of Rigid Bodies (2 V)

Bozorth Ferromagnetism

Morse Ingard Theoretical Acoustics

Zienkiewicz Finite Element Method (3 V)
Truesdell The Non-Linear Field Theories of Mechanics
Hill Mathematical Theory of Plasticity
Bowden Taylor Friction and Lubrication of Solids (2V)

Zeldovich Physics of Shock Waves and High-Temperature Hydrodynamic Phenomena (2 V)
Courant Friedrichs Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves
Slater Chemical Physics

 

[Frabjous]

I do not know if a conference proceeding can be a bible, but if so

The planetary science cratering community had the "blue bible"
Roddy Impact and Explosion Cratering

While I might be wrong, I would suspect that
Kolm High Magnetic Fields
was once considered a bible

The first major conference of a specialty is generally pretty good

 

[andresB]

I've just found this book on statistical mechanics, though I personally haven't read it yet
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0086PU1HS/?tag=pfamazon01-20
it is a big book, and cover a lot of material (according to the table of content).

 

[vela]

I've just found this book on statistical mechanics, though I personally haven't read it yet

It seems a bit strange to consider a book invaluable if you haven't read it yet.

 

[vanhees71]

It's a very good book at the advanced graduate level.

 

[andresB]

It seems a bit strange to consider a book invaluable if you haven't read it yet.

Indeed, that would be strange. Good thing I didn't say such thing.

 

[BvU]

Must be pretty good

 

[fresh_42]

Must be pretty good
View attachment 276525

It obviously is!

Proof (by capitalism): How many times do you have to use up a paperback to justify the purchase of a hardcover? In this case we have ten times, since

. Hence one hardcover equals ten paperbacks. But to use up ten paperbacks you will have to use the book really, really often. If it is despite of this still better to purchase a hardcover, then the book price guarantees a frequent use of the book. $\blacksquare$

 

[BvU]

I only posted because I found it so funny. Must be a bug in Amazon website: they can't show a seller.
Publisher is clear: hardcover 129 GBP soft 73 GBP

 

[dx]

"Modern Quantum Field Theory: A Concise Introduction" by Thomas Banks. It has a nice quality.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

It obviously is!

Proof (by capitalism): How many times do you have to use up a paperback to justify the purchase of a hardcover? In this case we have ten times, since View attachment 276526. Hence one hardcover equals ten paperbacks. But to use up ten paperbacks you will have to use the book really, really often. If it is despite of this still better to purchase a hardcover, then the book price guarantees a frequent use of the book. $\blacksquare$

In that case even better, the hardcover has a discount by this reasoning... ↕

 

[Demystifier]

"Modern Quantum Field Theory: A Concise Introduction" by Thomas Banks. It has a nice quality.

I hate this book. https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/bad-books.693040/

 

[andresB]

I hate this book. https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/bad-books.693040/

I'm surprised that thread only have two posts

 

[bpg]

Thanks for this thread. I'm a software engineer trying to further my education with self-study, and I'll definitely be checking out some of the texts recommended in this thread. I was looking over at my bookshelf of computer science books and thought I'd contribute my thoughts on CS "bibles."

Knuth - The Art of Computer Programming, 4 volumes.

As for computer science, I'd add CLRS - Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd ed.

I'd like to enthusiastically second these two.

TAOCP is utterly authoritative, with credit for finding errata being an absolute holy grail in the field. The only criterion that it arguably fails is that it doesn't "more or less cover everything" for its subject matter, since the work is incomplete and Knuth is unlikely to live to be 200+ years old (there are supposed to be at least 2 more books in Volume IV and at least three more volumes after that). Still, it does cover a lot so far, by my measure taking up almost 7 bookshelf inches. If you only ever read a single work in all of computer science, I think it's got to be this one.

CLRS is also a solid pick. It's just an introductory-level algorithms and data structures text, but it covers its material comprehensively, to the point that it's actually the single thickest volume on my shelf. It's a standard undergraduate text and it's well-respected enough as a reference to be cited all of the time in scholarly works and industry.

SICP

I'm not such a big fan of this as a bible, though it's difficult to articulate why. I guess my hesitation primarily comes from it being so old. Really the whole point of the book is to teach freshman CS students the basic cognitive building-blocks of programming to prepare them for further study. But SICP would not really be a great choice for that purpose nowadays. It's like nominating an introductory mechanics textbook from 1900. A student could get used to the archaic notation, but you still have to wonder whether it's a good idea to use a text completely uninformed by later developments like relativity. The archaic notation in the case of SICP is the use of the Scheme programming language, and the book is littered with pedagogy that hasn't exactly stood the test of time (for example, I would feel bad for students forced to muddle through chapters 4 and 5 nowadays). It's tough to recommend a textbook published 35 years ago when the material in the book largely didn't even exist 35 years before it was written. The early volumes of TAOCP have this same problem, but skirt it since their much more mathematical focus remains relevant today while SICP's subject matter is more of an applied science that is a moving target.

Okay, so do I have anything new to add for CS? I've only got one thing on my shelf that unequivocally meets the entire definition: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig. It doesn't cover everything in AI obviously, but the introductory material that it does cover is encyclopedic. It's a standard, well-respected text in the field.

(I could give other recommendations that do things better than the standard bible on the topic, but that's not the point of the thread! )

 

[EigenState137]

Greetings,

Anatole Abragam, The Principles of Nuclear Magnetism, Oxford University Press, (1993).ES

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