Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#21

Post by codinhood » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 12:33 AM UTC

senorcrab wrote: post #8

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are: - University Physics by Young and Freedman - Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker - Modern Physics by Krane You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics. For a nonrigorous introduction/overview: - The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose…

> Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker

I strongly recommend this textbook. I used in college, and it's really good. There are a lot of problems for each chapter, I suggest doing them as they help a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#22

Post by aristofun » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

senorcrab wrote: post #19

aristofun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landau was Einstein+ level genius and the course was a soviet theoretical physics bible many years ago. But it’s not a good educational resource by modern standards and pretty dated.

True it is pretty dated. OP was requesting resources that cover *all* of physics and Landau popped into mind. Is there a modern series of textbooks that offers such a broad coverage?

Landau these days doesn’t look like a “broad coverage” at all.

More like “many specific topics and areas covered in a set of books under same authors”.

Also Landau was one of the last (probably the last) polymath physicists who covered a wide range of fields.

I doubt it is even technically possible to cover even 30% of all modern theoretical physics in a single course with depth comparable to Landau books.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#23

Post by rramadass » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:16 AM UTC

egghack wrote: post #15

David Tong's textbooks which are based on lecture notes he made public: https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/books.html

These seem pretty good; had not known of these.

Thanks for the pointer.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#24

Post by rramadass » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

senorcrab wrote: post #8

Freshman university textbooks have what you need. Two of the most popular are: - University Physics by Young and Freedman - Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker - Modern Physics by Krane You might guess that real physics is not actually in freshman textbooks, and you are right. Modern physics requires rigorous mathematics. For a nonrigorous introduction/overview: - The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose…

Nice list. I had known of most of the books here; studied Resnick & Halliday (decades ago in bachelors) and have also perused Penrose's book. Landau/Lifshitz is of course well known.

The Nakahara book is new to me; Thanks for the pointer.

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#25

Post by timthorn » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 10:13 AM UTC

rramadass wrote: post #13

timthorn wrote: post #7

Felder & Felder's Modern Physics is pretty good ( https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/physic... ). I also second OgsyedIE's suggestion og Young & Freedman.

The Felder & Felder book looks really good and doesn't seem as mathematical as Walecka i.e. more expository. Looking at the ToC/Sample the chapters have a good progression and are nicely setup. The print copy however seems prohibitively expensive :-(

The print copy of Felder and Felder looks to be cheaper than Young and Freedman at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon?

Re: Ask HN: Expository/Succinct Books on Modern Physics

#26

Post by rramadass » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #25

rramadass wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Felder & Felder book looks really good and doesn't seem as mathematical as Walecka i.e. more expository. Looking at the ToC/Sample the chapters have a good progression and are nicely setup. The print copy however seems prohibitively expensive :-(

The print copy of Felder and Felder looks to be cheaper than Young and Freedman at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon?

I am based in India, so Amazon.in has a low-price Indian edition of Young & Freedman while Felder & Felder is the original US edition which is quite expensive.

I have decided to get all (the seven i have listed in my post above) of John Dirk Walecka's books since low-price editions are available and they seem quite rigorous with enough depth to boot. Pairing it with some other easier text (perhaps Young & Freedman) would cover my bases nicely.