A couple of publishing events of possible interest to CV readers:
- As an interesting experiment in web publishing, Robert Frenay’s new book Pulse is being fully published online. The book is about the future of computers, technology, and complex systems, so its appearance in blog form makes a certain kind of sense.
- Morse and Feshbach’s Methods of Theoretical Physics, a classic textbook and reference, has been reprinted after being out of circulation for a while. At almost $300, it’s not really an impulse buy, but you do get two volumes of about 1000 pages each. The reprinting was done under the supervision of Mark Feshbach, son of co-author Herman Feshbach.
Truth in advertising compels me to admit that I have not read either of these books! Nor I am getting anything for mentioning them, so it’s not really “advertising.” But both events are interesting.
ah….Moss and Fishhead…. That brings back memories of E+M from Jackson taught by Parker. I will now have trouble sleeping tonight….
Books … reminds me off, I just bought a bit of your wisedom … 😉
About online book publishing: I hate reading off a computer screen, and printing out is not perfect either. Anyone any advice on how to read these things?
Cheers,
Helge
Morse and Feshbach provides a snapshot of theoretical physics just before it got really hard on the math front – probably as a consequence of the recognition of the importance and tractability of non-Abelian gauge theories. So it’s the stuff of nostalgia for its older readers. I can’t help but wonder – perhaps you can help me out here – do today’s young turks have this stuff down cold (presumably when they are about 10 years old) or are they as mystified by the Weiner Hopf method and the Polsch Teller potential as I am by all this talk of orbifolds etc?
$300 for 2000 pages of physicsy goodness compares well to about $100 for Feynman and Hibbs (second hand!). At least it’s not so big that it can’t be photocopied. Not that I would do that, of course.
I wonder what the cheapest of the ‘seminal’ textbooks, in terms of dollars/page (or perhaps dollars/pound of weight), is. Thorne, Misner and Wheeler (once described to me by a relativist as ‘a great little book inside a big, bad book’)? The Landau and Lifschitz books are really pretty expensive, the last I saw. Perhaps this would be an opportune time for Sean to remind us of the price and pagecount of his GR book.
My book: priceless.
Older reader, rest assured that I am completely clueless about the Polsch Teller potential. Then again, orbifolds aren’t exactly my thing either. But I’m pretty good at homotopy groups.
Interesting. So which post-WWII physics book is the most expensive per page?
Could it be The Dynamical Theory of Groups and Fields by the late Bryce DeWitt — $222 / 248 pages = $0.90/page?
Helge – Do you have an RSS Reader? If you can download a book a little bit at a time (through RSS), it makes reading books on a screen no harder than reading your email, or a daily news article. The book mentioned above (Pulse) lets you download through RSS. Or, check out some of the other “blooks” out there (books on blogs), that are also available through RSS. Here’s Wikipedia on Blooks.
One wishes older classic books like this would get printed in cheaper editions by Dover so youngsters could get them. C’est la vie I guess. As is some of the Dover editions are a definite mixed bag.
Arfken and Boas both offer reasonable weight per dollar (although not if you buy them on campus here, at which prices the cashiers should properly be wearing a mask and cape). Not sure if either are ‘seminal texts’, although mine have seen some serious use.
When I was an undergraduate 25 years ago I lusted after Morse & Feshback, which then was only $75 per volume. Alas, it was beyond my means, and I made due with books like Arfken’s “Mathematical Methods for Physicists.” But if I were an undergraduate today I’d be spending my money on books on differential geometry and group theory — Morse & Feshbach has, unfortunately, been regulated to the realm of a library book where one goes every three years to look up a certain potential or differential equation. Physics is no longer about differentiation and integration — perhaps the reason I no longer understand most of it.
I think that there’s a fair amount of theoretical physics that’s not completely reliant on differential geometry and group theory, still. Although they don’t hurt (particularly the latter, in my field).
#2 Helge –
what browser do you use? Interenet explorer has a terrible time prinint anything not perfectly sized. Opera and Firefox are ususaly better from what I know. those dont always work either… but it may help.
I spent a lot of money on books, as an undergraduate, as a graduate student and as a postdoc. I just couldn’t find the time to read them all. As it is, they sit on my book shelf as a stark reminder of how little I actually know about physics.
Also, they mock me everytime I have to move…
Morse and Feshbach is a wonderful pair of books. The illustrations are great, especially the stereo pairs, with which you could practice seeing in 3-D before the days of the Magic Eye stereo images.
Tony Smith
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/
The reprint of M&F looks beautiful albeit a bit pricey but that’s how it is. Someone asked if the “young turks” have this stuff down cold. I doubt it. (What is the Polsch-Teller potential?) I would buy these if I could afford them as I collect classic texts when I can. While it is really nice to own such beautiful editions of classic texts like this, one often wishes for cheap paperbacks making the info more accessible and easily available. If you are into any area of applied math or mathematical physics then I think a lot of this stuff is still well worth learning, even if just for the “mental bodybuilding” of working through some chapters and trying problems.
I still well remember the pain of paying $16 each for my M&F. Of course I couldn’t afford the only available pocket calculator – the HP-35 (with trig functions!) at $400.
The triumph of publisher greed which resulted in copyrights which are now essentially perpetual is a factor in the huge run up of textbook prices.
I don’t brake for Wiley or McGraw-Hill employees or authors.
Also, you haven’t really mastered M&F until you can decouple your eyes well enough to see the three – dimensional versions of the stereo pairs of the sixteen (or so) separable three-D coordinate systems.
No doubt it would be even harder in ten dimensions!