Negative Positive
Title: Very poor text
Review: Just finishing up a semester-long, junior-level optics course using this book. It is absolutely horrid. The students often find the exposition incomprehensible (as do I). The authors frequently pull results out of thin air when a few lines of derivation/explanation would have made things clear. The problem sets are generally useless as they are routinely too difficult or too easy. The choice of topics is over-reaching. Care should be taken with fundamentals, then applications and variations on a theme can be introduced. This book makes the fundamentals a mystery, then piles on one topic after another before the end of the chapter. I can't think of anything good to say about this book. No real online support. Even the diagrams are frequently a head-scratching affair. It should be discontinued. What garbage. I wish my students could get their money back.
Is the review positive or negative? 