The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics 1st Edition

Beautiful book. Worst typesetting I have seen in a kindle book in a long time, and I am reading it on my computer after thinking it was just my device. The equations are clip art (you can see the tops or bottoms of text below it) because the typesetters can't use latex. Excuseable, but the worst part is the inline equations have this much space between each letter. Returning it half way read so I can buy a paper copy. Sad!

This "The Theoretical Minimum" series is one of a kind. It bills itself as text book for the self learner. Unlike a dumbed down popular science book this is the real deal - seeks to explain the world via mathematics, in the same manner a physicist does. But unlike a text book it doesn't teach by repetition and exercises. Nor does it assume you have taken the appropriate pre-requisite maths course.Instead it takes you step by step through the whole through whole box and dice. Don't know calculus or maybe you've forgotten your trig identities? Don't worry - it's covered in the just enough depth to understand what follows. It's done without jargon and in a very readable tone, with the more difficult topics covered from several angles so you have a hope of gaining the insight needed from one of them. And it's done with the insight and understand of a man who is not only of the the leading experts in his field, he's also been teaching it for years. Given the topic it isn't easy going. Trying to get my head around things that weren't covered in high school physics when I did it is a struggle - like why the Lagrangian could possibly work. But it is possible, and with the pleasant tone of the book even pleasant.In this day and age where one could potentially teach yourself in our newly connected world, this is the only series of books I've come across that delivers on the promise. For now it is one of a kind. Now Susskind has shown how it is done I hope we will see more.

The rating above does not apply to the content of the book but rather to the presentation. The substance so far is very good but I'm not sure that whoever is responsible for the digital edition of this book actually bothered to review it before posting it for sale. Regardless of whether the reader is using an iPad, a Kindle, or a computer to read this volume they will require a magnifying glass to read the formulae as the font appears to be either 5 or 6 point size. The typesetting generally leaves much to be desired with large gaps in the text spacing that exist for no fathomable reason. After almost 1000 purchases I have never returned a digital book to Amazon but am seriously considering it with this one.The publisher - Basic Books - should be panned for this effort. Amusingly, the back of the title page states that the book was typeset using Mathematica. I have Mathematica and I've never seen the application produce such poor renditions of formulae. If there was an option to acquire the volume in an nb file format (Mathematica's notebook format) at least I could read it on my computer!

Ebook version is totally unreadable on an actual Kindle. There are mathematical formulas everywhere and they are completely illegible with no way to zoom in that I can find.It does look great on my PC and is almost readable on a Fire 10" tablet, so if that's your thing then you're probably safe.Would prefer to have gotten a refund on my purchase, but missed the seven day window by a couple of days. No comment on the actual book, except that what I did manage to read looked very informative.

This work covers the basics in a manner that makes it easy to move on to more advanced topics. For those of us who had more "practical" introductions to Physics it is very enlightening. It should be of interest to anyone who was introduced to the subject a few decades ago. It does require a level of mathematics that puts it out of the reach of most casual readers, but as the authors point out, there are many people with technical backgrounds who will benefit from this approach.

I got the ebook and have tried to look at it on both a Kindle paperwhite and Kindle for the iPad. The regular text is fine, but much of the math and diagrams are rendered in extremely small type that is nearly impossible to make out. Choosing a bigger font for the text has no effect on the size of the math equations and diagrams. This seems to be true of all of the math on the Kindle paperwhite ereader; on the Kindle for iPad the equations are sometimes large enough to be readable and sometimes not. I have never encountered this before on a Kindle. Unfortunately, this book has a lot of math and diagrams. I strongly urge you to get the hardcopy of the book. The content is wonderful. The volume on quantum mechanics is a gem. I wish I had had this book when I was taking physics in college; I might have stayed a physics major.

Does not format well for the Kindle paper white. Most of the diagrams and equations are completely unreadable. I would give the book five stars if it wasn't for the terrible formatting. I do not like to read on tablets or my PC so I use a paper white. Which I also buy my books from, there should be a warning that this book does not format well on your device when you go to purchase it.

This is a physics book and often there are one or more equations per page, however, in the Kindle edition, equations are displayed as figures and they do not scale. That is if you use a larger font, the equations look so tiny that you need a magnifying glass to see them properly. When will publishers learn how to display mathematics properly in digital editions? I'm very disappointed. Although one still can read the equations, it makes reading very unpleasant.

I have better than 20:20 vision in both eyes but cannot, without an annoying level of effort, read most of the labels on the diagrams (figures) nor the terms or operators of the equations. Scaling up the text size using the Kindle makes no difference. Further (at least on the iPhone and iPad) the figures and equations are not embedded as images which can be opened separately. There is, therefore, no way of increasing their size. Given the fundamental importance to understanding what is said in the book of being able to read the equations and understand the diagrams, this greatly reduces the point of purchasing this book on Kindle.

The material covered in this book is just right for those with a desire to re-acquaint themselves with the fundamentals. The reason I have marked it down is that it is poorly produced in terms of the printing. In this day and age it is simply not good enough not to be able to produce formulas in perfect form especially as this is of prime importance in a book containing quite a lot of mathematical expressions. I have also picked up a few mistakes which should have been detected in proof reading. My guess is that the book was produced cheaply and in a hurry.

If you've tried to watch Leonard Susskind's on-line lectures you will know its really difficult to follow along without his notes. Of course it all makes sense as he says it. But he writes on a succession of boards and then refers back. At that point, without the notes you can become lost.I thought this book would be a proxy for the notes but one that can be read independently. And it is, and it has the material. The problem to watch out for is that an issue is laid out and the foundations prepared then an equation will appear which is supposed to explain everything but it doesn't. It's a step too far. It's like there's a missing link. So in this sense it is frustrating because then its necessary to go to another book or web site to find the connection.It also presents problems but the solutions are not in the book. They are on-line in a PDF which you have to download and print out separately. Why?This could be a great book. After some revisions it may well be but not at the moment. It's written by someone who is good at Physics, for whom this all makes sense. I think George is not able to see when the leaps he makes, which are just common sense to him, are a challenge for the person trying to gain that sense.

As a non-physicist, non-mathematician with a strong interest in both disciplines, I have tried to get to grips with quantum mechanics for years. I can get my head around the subject qualitatively, but have come to the realization that I am lacking the math to understand it quantitatively, so at the ripe old age of 69 I decided to try to get into the required math. This book is a godsend - it starts at a level I am familiar with from my college years, and goes on to explain the fundamentals of classical mechanics in a way that I was never taught, at a level within my capabilities. The videos of Susskind's accompanying lectures on YouTube are great. I am looking forward to reading the Quantum Mechanics version of the book with great eagerness.

It's difficult to see who this book is aimed at. I really enjoyed it and learnt a great deal, but then I've completed 3 years of undergraduate education in physics. Perhaps it would be best for a 1st year university level physicist, one who's completed a couple of courses in calculus, or perhaps a brave A-Level student.I've deducted a star though, because the book is rife with errors. Just have a look at the errata at madscitech.org, it's huge. Spelling mistakes are fine but errors in equations can really lead you astray.