A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.


An excellent texbook on a fashionable subject, 07 Feb 2003
What do colloids, polymers, amphiphiles and liquid crystals have in common? Well, nothing at first sight. Yet all these diverse materials have common structural, and most importantly dynamic properties that fall between those of crystalline solids and simple molecular liquids and gases. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life, including glues, food, pigment paints,detergents, etc. In soft condensed matter the most important features are probably the following three: Universality, effect of Fluctuations, and Self-Assembly properties. Prof. Jones, a quite well-known researcher in the
field of soft matter, in this single volume textbook has attempted to present the subject at an introductory level, yet without losing much of clarity. The book is divided in ten chapters and Prof. Jones start his discussion by defining
what soft matter really is, and discussing the intermolecular forces and timescales operating in these systems. It is worth noticing that a very clear, albeit short discussion, on the glass transition of liquids is included in the second chapter, where the free volume theory is totally exposed as inadequate. I
have to say that coming from a polymer science background this is probably one of the very few books, that simply does not explain glass transition by the much celebrated (and also mistaken) free volume theory, but proceeds further.
Following the first two chapters, the material of the book may be divided into two categories. The first category deals with specific systems of soft condensed matter, where colloidal dispersions, polymers, liquid crystals, and bio-polymers
are covered in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 10 respectively. The second category involves the discussion of more general concepts appearing in soft matter, like phase transitions, gelation, and supramolecular self-assembly.
Overall, the book is really very well written and in some parts the material included is discussed quite elegantly (for example the Casimir effect in chapter four). It is quite difficult most of the times to write a scientific book, and yet avoid an
overload of mathematics, but rather focus on the principles and manage to explain them elaborately. In addition, important references for further reading are suggested at the end of each chapter, and in two appendices a brief discussion on statistical mechanics aspects, and Brownian motion is given. My only objection to Prof. Jones' excellent textbook, is probably the relatively small part devoted to the polymer crystallinity in the solid state, and also to the total omission of the subject of deformation, yield and fracture of polymers. The inclusion of these subjects, would have certainly increased the size of the book, but the text would have also been far more complete. The book is mostly addressed to senior undergraduate physics students, and it is clear that it has been derived by the author's lectures in the class. Students of other fields (materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry) will
certainly find the book of value. The book is at an introductory level, but familiarity with the basics of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and polymer science will certainly boost the level of understanding of the reader.
Concluding, I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who is interested in soft condensed matter.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.


An excellent texbook on a fashionable subject, 07 Feb 2003
What do colloids, polymers, amphiphiles and liquid crystals have in common? Well, nothing at first sight. Yet all these diverse materials have common structural, and most importantly dynamic properties that fall between those of crystalline solids and simple molecular liquids and gases. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life, including glues, food, pigment paints,detergents, etc. In soft condensed matter the most important features are probably the following three: Universality, effect of Fluctuations, and Self-Assembly properties. Prof. Jones, a quite well-known researcher in the
field of soft matter, in this single volume textbook has attempted to present the subject at an introductory level, yet without losing much of clarity. The book is divided in ten chapters and Prof. Jones start his discussion by defining
what soft matter really is, and discussing the intermolecular forces and timescales operating in these systems. It is worth noticing that a very clear, albeit short discussion, on the glass transition of liquids is included in the second chapter, where the free volume theory is totally exposed as inadequate. I
have to say that coming from a polymer science background this is probably one of the very few books, that simply does not explain glass transition by the much celebrated (and also mistaken) free volume theory, but proceeds further.
Following the first two chapters, the material of the book may be divided into two categories. The first category deals with specific systems of soft condensed matter, where colloidal dispersions, polymers, liquid crystals, and bio-polymers
are covered in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 10 respectively. The second category involves the discussion of more general concepts appearing in soft matter, like phase transitions, gelation, and supramolecular self-assembly.
Overall, the book is really very well written and in some parts the material included is discussed quite elegantly (for example the Casimir effect in chapter four). It is quite difficult most of the times to write a scientific book, and yet avoid an
overload of mathematics, but rather focus on the principles and manage to explain them elaborately. In addition, important references for further reading are suggested at the end of each chapter, and in two appendices a brief discussion on statistical mechanics aspects, and Brownian motion is given. My only objection to Prof. Jones' excellent textbook, is probably the relatively small part devoted to the polymer crystallinity in the solid state, and also to the total omission of the subject of deformation, yield and fracture of polymers. The inclusion of these subjects, would have certainly increased the size of the book, but the text would have also been far more complete. The book is mostly addressed to senior undergraduate physics students, and it is clear that it has been derived by the author's lectures in the class. Students of other fields (materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry) will
certainly find the book of value. The book is at an introductory level, but familiarity with the basics of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and polymer science will certainly boost the level of understanding of the reader.
Concluding, I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who is interested in soft condensed matter.

A great book for all..., 24 May 2004
The authors of this book have been true to their word, and have written a book of quality that serves as an extremely good introduction to this relatively new area of physics.

In earlier chapters you will be taken through all the steps leading up to the realisation of a Bose-Einstein Condensate without the use of heavy and confusing mathematics, and whereby the only prerequisite needed is a general background knowledge of physical principles.

In later chapters the material can become very complicated for the beginner, such as myself, and you may find yourself a bit confused. But these chapters are more specialised however and are not essential for the beginner to understand.

All in all, I found this book extremely useful and considering that it is about a field that is so very new, and only a small selection of books are currently available, you cannot really go wrong with this one.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.


An excellent texbook on a fashionable subject, 07 Feb 2003
What do colloids, polymers, amphiphiles and liquid crystals have in common? Well, nothing at first sight. Yet all these diverse materials have common structural, and most importantly dynamic properties that fall between those of crystalline solids and simple molecular liquids and gases. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life, including glues, food, pigment paints,detergents, etc. In soft condensed matter the most important features are probably the following three: Universality, effect of Fluctuations, and Self-Assembly properties. Prof. Jones, a quite well-known researcher in the
field of soft matter, in this single volume textbook has attempted to present the subject at an introductory level, yet without losing much of clarity. The book is divided in ten chapters and Prof. Jones start his discussion by defining
what soft matter really is, and discussing the intermolecular forces and timescales operating in these systems. It is worth noticing that a very clear, albeit short discussion, on the glass transition of liquids is included in the second chapter, where the free volume theory is totally exposed as inadequate. I
have to say that coming from a polymer science background this is probably one of the very few books, that simply does not explain glass transition by the much celebrated (and also mistaken) free volume theory, but proceeds further.
Following the first two chapters, the material of the book may be divided into two categories. The first category deals with specific systems of soft condensed matter, where colloidal dispersions, polymers, liquid crystals, and bio-polymers
are covered in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 10 respectively. The second category involves the discussion of more general concepts appearing in soft matter, like phase transitions, gelation, and supramolecular self-assembly.
Overall, the book is really very well written and in some parts the material included is discussed quite elegantly (for example the Casimir effect in chapter four). It is quite difficult most of the times to write a scientific book, and yet avoid an
overload of mathematics, but rather focus on the principles and manage to explain them elaborately. In addition, important references for further reading are suggested at the end of each chapter, and in two appendices a brief discussion on statistical mechanics aspects, and Brownian motion is given. My only objection to Prof. Jones' excellent textbook, is probably the relatively small part devoted to the polymer crystallinity in the solid state, and also to the total omission of the subject of deformation, yield and fracture of polymers. The inclusion of these subjects, would have certainly increased the size of the book, but the text would have also been far more complete. The book is mostly addressed to senior undergraduate physics students, and it is clear that it has been derived by the author's lectures in the class. Students of other fields (materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry) will
certainly find the book of value. The book is at an introductory level, but familiarity with the basics of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and polymer science will certainly boost the level of understanding of the reader.
Concluding, I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who is interested in soft condensed matter.

A great book for all..., 24 May 2004
The authors of this book have been true to their word, and have written a book of quality that serves as an extremely good introduction to this relatively new area of physics.

In earlier chapters you will be taken through all the steps leading up to the realisation of a Bose-Einstein Condensate without the use of heavy and confusing mathematics, and whereby the only prerequisite needed is a general background knowledge of physical principles.

In later chapters the material can become very complicated for the beginner, such as myself, and you may find yourself a bit confused. But these chapters are more specialised however and are not essential for the beginner to understand.

All in all, I found this book extremely useful and considering that it is about a field that is so very new, and only a small selection of books are currently available, you cannot really go wrong with this one.

Optimal for beginners in the field, 21 Jul 2007
Judging from this volume, Annett seems to be a great teacher and a great writer.

The distance between the material covered here and actual research is quite large, but that's OK, since the book is advertised as a pedagogical introduction, and it is really good at that.

Every chapter includes a number of smartly-chosen problems, the solutions to which are given in an Appendix.

I have given the book 4 stars instead of 5, because it suffers from horrendous copy-editing. Grammatical mistakes, typos in equations, wrong references to previous equations (and the list goes on). One gets the feeling that the publisher received the author's manuscript and published it as is. This makes it very difficult to understand why it's so expensive. Hopefully these errors will be removed in a future edition.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.


An excellent texbook on a fashionable subject, 07 Feb 2003
What do colloids, polymers, amphiphiles and liquid crystals have in common? Well, nothing at first sight. Yet all these diverse materials have common structural, and most importantly dynamic properties that fall between those of crystalline solids and simple molecular liquids and gases. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life, including glues, food, pigment paints,detergents, etc. In soft condensed matter the most important features are probably the following three: Universality, effect of Fluctuations, and Self-Assembly properties. Prof. Jones, a quite well-known researcher in the
field of soft matter, in this single volume textbook has attempted to present the subject at an introductory level, yet without losing much of clarity. The book is divided in ten chapters and Prof. Jones start his discussion by defining
what soft matter really is, and discussing the intermolecular forces and timescales operating in these systems. It is worth noticing that a very clear, albeit short discussion, on the glass transition of liquids is included in the second chapter, where the free volume theory is totally exposed as inadequate. I
have to say that coming from a polymer science background this is probably one of the very few books, that simply does not explain glass transition by the much celebrated (and also mistaken) free volume theory, but proceeds further.
Following the first two chapters, the material of the book may be divided into two categories. The first category deals with specific systems of soft condensed matter, where colloidal dispersions, polymers, liquid crystals, and bio-polymers
are covered in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 10 respectively. The second category involves the discussion of more general concepts appearing in soft matter, like phase transitions, gelation, and supramolecular self-assembly.
Overall, the book is really very well written and in some parts the material included is discussed quite elegantly (for example the Casimir effect in chapter four). It is quite difficult most of the times to write a scientific book, and yet avoid an
overload of mathematics, but rather focus on the principles and manage to explain them elaborately. In addition, important references for further reading are suggested at the end of each chapter, and in two appendices a brief discussion on statistical mechanics aspects, and Brownian motion is given. My only objection to Prof. Jones' excellent textbook, is probably the relatively small part devoted to the polymer crystallinity in the solid state, and also to the total omission of the subject of deformation, yield and fracture of polymers. The inclusion of these subjects, would have certainly increased the size of the book, but the text would have also been far more complete. The book is mostly addressed to senior undergraduate physics students, and it is clear that it has been derived by the author's lectures in the class. Students of other fields (materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry) will
certainly find the book of value. The book is at an introductory level, but familiarity with the basics of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and polymer science will certainly boost the level of understanding of the reader.
Concluding, I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who is interested in soft condensed matter.

A great book for all..., 24 May 2004
The authors of this book have been true to their word, and have written a book of quality that serves as an extremely good introduction to this relatively new area of physics.

In earlier chapters you will be taken through all the steps leading up to the realisation of a Bose-Einstein Condensate without the use of heavy and confusing mathematics, and whereby the only prerequisite needed is a general background knowledge of physical principles.

In later chapters the material can become very complicated for the beginner, such as myself, and you may find yourself a bit confused. But these chapters are more specialised however and are not essential for the beginner to understand.

All in all, I found this book extremely useful and considering that it is about a field that is so very new, and only a small selection of books are currently available, you cannot really go wrong with this one.

Optimal for beginners in the field, 21 Jul 2007
Judging from this volume, Annett seems to be a great teacher and a great writer.

The distance between the material covered here and actual research is quite large, but that's OK, since the book is advertised as a pedagogical introduction, and it is really good at that.

Every chapter includes a number of smartly-chosen problems, the solutions to which are given in an Appendix.

I have given the book 4 stars instead of 5, because it suffers from horrendous copy-editing. Grammatical mistakes, typos in equations, wrong references to previous equations (and the list goes on). One gets the feeling that the publisher received the author's manuscript and published it as is. This makes it very difficult to understand why it's so expensive. Hopefully these errors will be removed in a future edition.

lecture notes, 16 Dec 2003
If you sit the course given by Brian Tanner then this is an absolutely essential text. If you are not fortunate enough to be lectured by him then the text makes for an excellent introduction to the concepts of solid state physics. Read to ensure you get the basics right before getting lost as concepts are developed.

A detailed glimpse into applied qunatum physics, 05 Jan 2002
The book develops the ideas founded upon quatum physics and describes their relation to the basis of crystalline structures amongst others. It is ideal for physicists at an undergraduate level and beyond incorporating all of the fundamental topics required to fully understand this topic. Constructed in a clear and methodical fashion it can be classed as essential reading for any academic in the field, perfectly balanced in weight and depth.

An essential undergraduate text, 04 Jun 2004
Most physics degree courses don't cover the topic of Statistical Mechanics until some way through the second year and this is mostly due to students requiring a reasonable grounding in thermodynamics, which is traditionally a 2nd year topic. Statistical Mechanics: A Survival Guide is an excellent book for any student studying this subject as it starts off by explaining the basics of statistics in such a manner that is very easy to understand. The foundations that it sets in the first chapter ensure that you have a very clear understanding of these basics, which are extremely important for grasping the idea of a microstate, essential to deriving the distribution functions for the various types of particle. It gives very complete discussions on quantum statistics and its applications along with the standard sections on ideal gases. The links between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are frequently highlighted so as to show how the two subjects go hand in hand. This is an excellent text on a subject that can become very complicated and the presentation and explanations in the book cannot be faulted.

My only quibble is the price - I would have expected just a little bit more for my money but nonetheless I still consider it an essential book for a physics student to have on their shelf.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable!, 21 Oct 2007
I wish this book had been published when I first started as a grad student! Instead there was Loudon's "The Quantum Theory of Light" and Marlan Scully's "Quantum Optics" - both excellent books, but both lose sight of the fundamental physics, and do not really bridge the gap between most physics degrees and the subtle mathematical world of quantum optics. This is a book which really introduces the subject from a concise fundamental physics footing, taking into account that new grad students are not experts in the field - it is enough work for some students to come to terms with a lot of new mathematics, let alone try and understand where many physical approximations creep in - some quantum optics lectures simply introduce expressions without explanation, and this book seems to answer most of them.

A case in point is the quantum treatment of the Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment, where in the treatement of one of the beamsplitter output ports, a subtraction appears. This book is the only place where I've clearly seen sufficient explanation, in a margin note, that this arises through conservation of energy (actually you are not handed this on a plate, but given a guided problem that shows how it arises, which is a good idea).

And here lies the only complaint about the book, that it uses margin notes. It might sound a strange complaint, perhaps its just me being stupid, but if you've spent a few years reading books and papers where you're used to scanning through single column blocks of text for a vital bit of information, your eyes don't immediately notice an off-set, small block of margin text (in small font, so it looks like a figure caption). A few times I've been caught out searching for explanations in the main body of the text, only to realise after much head scratching that its in the margin notes!

In all, I find this the best book I've ever read - it makes quantum optics enjoyable, simply because of the grass-roots physics. Not everybody in quantum optics is a theorist, some people actually have to do experiments, which is the hardest part of quantum optics.

Thankyou Mark Fox for making Quantum Optics accessible and enjoyable to all!

Brilliant, 19 Aug 2004
For any senior undergraduate or first-year physics/materials science graduate needing an introduction to optical properties of solids, this is the book for you. Don't go near the standard texts (at least not until you've read this one) as I think they are too complex for the introductory reader. This is really clearly written, giving you a good overview and a solid understanding of the basics of the subject without getting bogged down in mathematics. If I was teaching a final year solid-state class, this is the book I would use. The book has plenty of illustrations and examples and is very user-friendly. Thankfully (unlike some) the author has kept all explanations concise and clear. I found I could go ahead and perform experiments and get meaningful results based on what I had learnt in this book. Get it! You will be glad you did!

Readable and concise , 10 May 2008
I would recommend this book for starting graduate students and final year undergrads that want to improve their understanding of magnetism. This is an excellent book to for an experimentalist to flick through and pick out topics that you have seen in papers and not understood. For me, it is consistently clear and relevant, with enough maths to be precise, but not so much to slow the pace of reading.

Being relatively short, I would not recommend this as a reference source, but it should be more than enough for most undergraduate courses.

Most importantly, I found this book very useful.


An excellent texbook on a fashionable subject, 07 Feb 2003
What do colloids, polymers, amphiphiles and liquid crystals have in common? Well, nothing at first sight. Yet all these diverse materials have common structural, and most importantly dynamic properties that fall between those of crystalline solids and simple molecular liquids and gases. Many such materials are familiar from everyday life, including glues, food, pigment paints,detergents, etc. In soft condensed matter the most important features are probably the following three: Universality, effect of Fluctuations, and Self-Assembly properties. Prof. Jones, a quite well-known researcher in the
field of soft matter, in this single volume textbook has attempted to present the subject at an introductory level, yet without losing much of clarity. The book is divided in ten chapters and Prof. Jones start his discussion by defining
what soft matter really is, and discussing the intermolecular forces and timescales operating in these systems. It is worth noticing that a very clear, albeit short discussion, on the glass transition of liquids is included in the second chapter, where the free volume theory is totally exposed as inadequate. I
have to say that coming from a polymer science background this is probably one of the very few books, that simply does not explain glass transition by the much celebrated (and also mistaken) free volume theory, but proceeds further.
Following the first two chapters, the material of the book may be divided into two categories. The first category deals with specific systems of soft condensed matter, where colloidal dispersions, polymers, liquid crystals, and bio-polymers
are covered in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 10 respectively. The second category involves the discussion of more general concepts appearing in soft matter, like phase transitions, gelation, and supramolecular self-assembly.
Overall, the book is really very well written and in some parts the material included is discussed quite elegantly (for example the Casimir effect in chapter four). It is quite difficult most of the times to write a scientific book, and yet avoid an
overload of mathematics, but rather focus on the principles and manage to explain them elaborately. In addition, important references for further reading are suggested at the end of each chapter, and in two appendices a brief discussion on statistical mechanics aspects, and Brownian motion is given. My only objection to Prof. Jones' excellent textbook, is probably the relatively small part devoted to the polymer crystallinity in the solid state, and also to the total omission of the subject of deformation, yield and fracture of polymers. The inclusion of these subjects, would have certainly increased the size of the book, but the text would have also been far more complete. The book is mostly addressed to senior undergraduate physics students, and it is clear that it has been derived by the author's lectures in the class. Students of other fields (materials science, chemical engineering and chemistry) will
certainly find the book of value. The book is at an introductory level, but familiarity with the basics of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and polymer science will certain