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Summary: All to know about intro physics. Perfect 4 engineers!
Review: Covers electricity, magnetism, largescale and quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, everything! This book helped me choose which of these areas I want to make a career out of. Extensive use of calculus. People who think calculus is useless are proved wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book
Review: Douglas Giancoli did an excellent job in writing this book. This book ranks among the best available in the market. This book is used by the physics 4A-E series at UCSD. Clear, concise, and well-written are words that accurately describe this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a very good physics book
Review: I am currently taking a calculus-based physics course in my freshman year using Serway's text (Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Sixth Edition). I purchased Giancoli's text because it has the same type of material and a solutions manual to accompany it. I am now in my third term and, having used both books for the first two terms, I can say that Serway's book is probably a better choice for those majoring in physics such as myself. The reason I make this claim is that Serway's derivations are a little more riggerous in most cases and in the exercises Serway FORCES you to develop and derive equations for the perticular problem at hand (precicely what a physicist in the "real world" must be able to do to be successful), whereas Giancoli rarely gives problems that cannot be solved directly by substituting values into given equations. This discrepency can sometimes be troubling though to those not used to having to decide what assumptions to make for themselves.However, neither book can give a student a complete insight into the complicated subject of physics. Each is a pretty good text for a first course in physics and the level of calculus used in each is very basic (a study of basic differential and integral calculus will do fine).
Rating: 
Summary: A decent intro to Physics.
Review: I am currently taking a calculus-based physics course in my freshman year using Serway's text (Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Sixth Edition). I purchased Giancoli's text because it has the same type of material and a solutions manual to accompany it. I am now in my third term and, having used both books for the first two terms, I can say that Serway's book is probably a better choice for those majoring in physics such as myself. The reason I make this claim is that Serway's derivations are a little more riggerous in most cases and in the exercises Serway FORCES you to develop and derive equations for the perticular problem at hand (precicely what a physicist in the "real world" must be able to do to be successful), whereas Giancoli rarely gives problems that cannot be solved directly by substituting values into given equations. This discrepency can sometimes be troubling though to those not used to having to decide what assumptions to make for themselves. However, neither book can give a student a complete insight into the complicated subject of physics. Each is a pretty good text for a first course in physics and the level of calculus used in each is very basic (a study of basic differential and integral calculus will do fine).
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Summary: The worst book on physics
Review: I don't understand why my instructor chooses this book for 3 quarters continously. This book gives you nothing. I have a feeling like the author doesn't know anything, so he uses lots of words to describe some thing that are soo obvious. With other difficult concepts, he doesn't say anything, or just a few words. Some one compared this book with Lev Landau's one. Please give me a break. Lev Landau is a great physicist, while this guy is nothing at all. I still wonder why this kind of textbook is still around. I feel frustrated with this book. My conclusion is: if you really understand physics, this book is not for you. This book is only for kids. I hope that some one could pass my message to the authors, and hope that they could write better books in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent but way expensive
Review: I had to buy this book for my two general physics courses. I must say this book is the most expensive I've ever bought. This leads me to my first bad critique: this book is unnecessarily large and expensive. The book is full of useless pictures (all in vibrant expensive color), it has too many examples and 1/3 of the majority of the pages are blank. I don't recommend this book if your a poor college student. My second bad critique is that some examples aren't fully explained (particularly with the some equations). Third bad critique: some problems require knowledge that you won't find in the book. There was an instance where I ran into a problem (a double Atwood machine problem) that required knowledge of Newton's laws in non-inertial frames which the book does not provide. I managed to solve this problem with outside help but I must say I felt cheated. My last bad critique: this book has no errata yet!
Now for some good points. The authors exposition of the material is fairly straight-forward. The book is full of problems (some which overly challenging but good nevertheless), covers a great number of topics (45 chapters worth), and uses very little calculus (the majority of the problems involve highschool mathematics).
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Summary: For professors considering using this book - please read!
Review: I realize that if you are looking to buy this book you probably need it for a class and thus do not have the option of not buying the book so I would like to share my experience with it. I needed this book for my freshmen physics class at SUNY Stony Brook and decided to buy it online. I was greatly dissappointed with how much the book assumes. It assumes a thorough education in calculus and a lot of "common sense" that really isn't so common. As an example, in the first chapter of the book, it assumes that the reader knows that the horizion is the line perpendicular to the tangent of a person on the face of the earth. It does not explain this, rather it just assumes that you would know that, and the book proceeds in this manner through out the later chapters. The answers that it gives as examples often skip too many important steps and use mathematical ideas that can be foreign to some students, especially freshmen. It is hard to follow the examples because of this and the solutions guide that is meant to complement the book does even worse work in terms of abbreviating important steps and concepts. By skipping too many steps it makes the later chapters more difficult because they assume knowledge which you do not have and, in all likelihood, do not learn in the earlier chapters. The book is filled with too many pictures that really don't illustrate anything important (as an example there is a picture of an ice skater spinning) and not enough free body diagrams and logical, step by step proofs and examples. Overall I found the text to be very frustrating and really lacking in clarity and ease of learning. It was an ordeal more than a guide. For professors who are considering using this book -- I urge you to pick a different book that has more extensive examples and proofs and doesn't assume as much from the reader.
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Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I used this book in my Engineering Physics series and got an A in all three classes. This book covers it all; in fact, you won't be able to go through every chapter in 3 quarters or 2 semesters. There are 45 chapters! I recommend that you have a background in Physics before you buy this book. I had no Physics background and struggled during the first few chapters (but got an A anyway). I highly recomment this book. The author knows what he's doing.
Rating:
Summary: Not a very good physics book
Review: If you're a beginner or not interested in physics stay away from this book. Its mostly geared towards people with high interest and a good reference. Otherwise, the book is very boring to read and all they do is throw formulas at you. Stay away at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to physics.
Review: In all fairness to the book, it's not as bad as I made it out to be below. It is a little upsetting to be given tons of equations without any proofs. But the proofs really are beyond the scope of the book. I've looked at other books of the same level since I wrote the original review, and this one has turned out to be better than all the others. The book would've been better if they mentioned a few extra things like how its treatment of electricity and magnetism should be taken as only working in an absolute frame, and is only an approximation to the full treatment. All in all, this book covers so many topics, that no matter what physics you are doing in the future, you'll always be able to find some information in here that won't be mentioned in your other book. It covers everything you need to know for a first mechanics course, a course in waves and modern physics, a first course in electricity and magnetism, plus a lot more that is never touched in class. Calculus is not needed for the mechanics course, but it is used in the book. If you know calculus, then you'll benefit. If you don't, you can skip the "calculus equations", and the rest of the mechanics part of the book will still all be comprehensible.
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