Soft Condensed Matter

Rating:
Summary: Excellent text for appreciating beauty of soft matter!
Review: The chapters are written in straightforward language, conveying essential ideas and fundamentals in very readable manner. The book illustrates how one can convey complex ideas in simple words and yet capture all intricacies of the subject. The book is self contained introduction to colloids, polymers, liquid crystals, self-assembly, crystallization, glass transition, phase behavior and gelation. I have not encountered a better book that presents such a rich overview of these vastly different yet interrelated domain of condensed matter physics in less than 200 pages.

Since the book was written fairly recently, it presents a very modern understanding of described topics. The book by Chaikin and Lubensky (~700 pages) is the one written for anyone interested in meaty details, and equations in their full grandeur. Strobl's recent book on condensed matter is another excellent text and presents lots of physics in very well written graduate level text. But to taste and tempt into soft matter, Jones book definitely is the one to pick!