Negative Positive
Title: Least favorite of all I've seen
Review: Huang approaches the subject as a series of proofs: he does not make physical arguments, and his writing is wooden. Instructors--avoid this book!Some have said that this book approaches stat mech from the refreshing view of kinetic theory. But it leaves out the Fokker-Planck and Langevin approaches, by which the Boltzmann equation is usually solved. Anyone interested in this approach would be *far* more rewarded by Landau's Physical Kinetics.Anyone interested in Gibbs theory should consult Landau or Sommerfeld.Anyone who wants good problems (and real applications) would be better served by the canonical McQuarrie.Anyone who wants a feel for what the subject *actually now is* should see Kadanoff or Chandler. Actually I think allowing students to leave stat mech without seeing the monte carlo algorithm or solving a stochastic equation is a crime.
Is the review positive or negative? 