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Rating: 
Summary: Too brief, unexplanatory. Avoid using for teaching purposes
Review: Explanations are often brief, making reference to other works rather than filling in the details. As a student, I've used it for several graduate courses, and have found a need to reference other books such as Siegman's "Lasers" in order to understand the material. This is a common reaction, based upon classmates. Derivations leave out numerous steps for brevity, sometimes crucial ones. Often states results from other works, without any explanation. It often seems a collection of material drawn from numerous sources, with little thought to connecting the ideas and notation into a teaching tool. May be more useful as a reference.
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Summary: So and so text in Quantum Eletronics.
Review: I have used this book for 3 courses in my faculty and i find this not a very good text for students.Mr Yariv style is a higly nonlinear one and he constantly assumes you know the things that you bought the book to understand.On the plus side his book is very comprehensive.I rate this book 2 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: One of the few books that bridges the gap between general laser theory and semiconductor lasers. Excellent explanations and the derivations are detailed enough to follow (if you want), but not to the point where the meaning is lost.
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Summary: If you like rigor in physics books, this is not your type.
Review: This book is a quick intro into optoelectronics. I mean quick. Really. Not much rigor (physical or mathematical) is to be found in this book. As I read the book, I kept having the feeling that the mathematical derivations are laid out to lead to the results desired, and if there have to be a dozen assumptions and approximations or skips in steps made to achieve the goal, then so be it. As for the justifications for those assumptions, why, they help you get to the desired results. For your amusement, I will point out one of such sneaky skips. Look first at Eq 8-1-17. If you don't like to take things for granted, you have verified this expression to your satisfaction. You are happy with it. Now fast forward to 8-7-3. Look at how there is a degeneracy factor in the Rabi frequency. Can you verify it?As I've said, if you want rigor, this book will disappoint you. Unfortunately, it appears that just about every book in optoelectronics is written rather loosely in this sense. So you are really stuck with this one, more or less.
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Summary: Classic textbook in the field, broad but terse coverage.
Review: This book is to the field of quantum electronics as Jackson's thick maroon book is to classical electrodynamics. The book covers a wide range of topics from basic concepts to advanced methods to real systems. It is a valuable reference, providing a wealth of knowledge for those who can get through it. Unfortunately, the text is brief and the derivations tend to make leaps and bounds without explanation. This is generally bad news for the student who wishes to learn the material for the first time. The use of examples throughout the book is appreciated, though they often deal with very specific problems and do not lend very well to understanding the basic concepts. Some prior knowledge of the subject, either mathematical or intuitive is recommended before delving into "Quantum Electronics". Kinda like Jackson's book, eh? My greatest complaint is the significant overlap with Yariv's other classic, "Optical Electronics". Imagine my shock and outrage when I discovered that the book I had just purchased repeats large sections of a book I already have, page-for-page verbatim. Perhaps a suggestion for future editions would be to combine the two books into one two volume work, thus eliminating redunancy and freeing up space to cover the material in greater detail.
Rating:
Summary: If you like rigor in physics books, this is not your type.
Review: this book is very good for graduate students who focus on quantum world. and the problems attached in each chapter are very useful for readers to check by themselves whether they really understand each topic or not. but my experience was that you usually need to read it twice to fully understand what the author's meaning. anyway, this is the best book i used among those optoelectronics's books.
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