Thermodynamics of Solids, 2nd Ed.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book at your own risk
Review: The book by Swalin is definitely not a book from which you may want to learn thermodynamics. First and foremost, it seems to me that the book is not proof read! There are some very fundamental mistakes in the book which might throroghly confuse the novice. Just to give you an example: the free energy curves are drawn wrong! A great deal of caution has to be exerted if this book is going to be used for the purpose of learning. In addition, the price is, in my opinion, not right. A few positive points worth mentioning are in order though...Swalin's book exposes the reader to Fermi-Dirac statistics and the theory of heat capacity at a reasonble level of detail within the context of thermodynamics that provides a good insight to the relationship between macroscopic thermodynamic phenomenology and statistical mechanics. That is indeed neat since it demonstrates how "flexible" thermodynamics is in addressing a wide range of physical phenomena. The treatment of solution thermodynamics and phase equilibria is quite superficial as compared to the books by Gaskell and Lupis. However, the chapters on semiconductors and defect equilibria can conveniently be used as a primer to the subject. Regrettably, I must say that this book definitely is not a "must have book." If you have already mastered the principles of (chemical) thermodynamics, then you may want to take a glance at it.