Industrial Books

This book is very good for all types of projects. It covers setting up a project, organizing the work, managing a project, handling several projects at once, dealing with project issues and crises, using modern technology such as groupware and the Internet. The approach of establishing an issues data base and relating issues to specific tasks in a project is unique. It is very useful.

This is one of the best project management books for introducing employees to modern project management in an interesting way. Most project management books are ver dry and lack realistic examples. Thus, it is difficult to motivate people to read and use such materials. This is a very practical, down to earth book that has many guidelines that you can use immediately as you read the book. Some of the strengths of the book are: 1) best description of matrix management; 2) use of collaborative tools in managing projects; 3) how to deal with multiple projects; 4) how to share resources across several projects; 5) how to deal with risk in projects. The authors have developed a very creative and useful approach in dealing with project risk that associates project risk with unresolved issues. I highly recommend this book.

Project management for the 21st century is one of the most usable, easy to read, and complete project management books. There are good examples. Techniques are modern--better than that available in other books. This books stresses working together, sharing information, and dealing with resources that are spread among various projects. Very good reference.

This book provides the basics of project management in an easy to use casual style. It proceeds step by step through building a plan and then managing a project. The chapter on project costing is good, but could use some more detail. The modern and historical examples are usefully examined. These could be expanded more later.

This book not only gives you all of the basics, but also highlights how to use the Internet for project management. Very useful material.

Viscosity estimation and other properties of gases

When you need physical property data, and you don't have exact information; this book provides best available estimations of the physical properties. It has been a great help to me, over the years.

Having worked on a piece of an earlier edition, as a grad student at U of Mo - Rolla; where Bruce Poling was a professor, I know how much work it is putting this together for the industries. My hats off to Bruce and his co-authors, and especially to Nanci, his wife, for doing yoman's work on this 5th edition of a classic!

If you are a chemical engineer and do not own this text, you will have a hard time. This text covers all physical properties of organic, and some inorganic, gases and liquids. It offers complete theoretical development and practical equations which are amenable to spreadsheets and numerical analysis. Particularly useful is a comparison at the end of every topic showing the accuracy of each method in predicting a property. Presented in tabular form, it allows the reader to choose a method which is sufficient for his/her needs. You may decide to choose a method that is less accurate but easier to program. Every chemical engineer should have this text. My only regret is that we did not have time in undergraduate to use this text. I learned its value from watching the graduate students.

If this review was helpful, please say so. Thanks.

The book is an absolutely practical treatise of applied thermodymamics. The explanations of how to use property estimation methods are excellent, but invaluable are the comments on their accuracy and recommendations as to when to use which method.

The book served as my operating manual for the ASPEN software for modeling chemical processes. The book documented nearly every method used by ASPEN.

I was a bit unconfortable when I bought this book since I was suspicious that this one was one of those unreadable thermodynamic books. Fortunately I was wrong. This book provides you with a complete treatment of the properties of gases and liquids in a plain language stressing the understanding of the basic laws governing the behavior of liquids and gases instead of the mathematic that goes with it. The treatment of the topics is very suitable for engineers since it allows quick understanding of the phenomena and provides a wealth of correlations and methods for estimating properties. The appendixes contain all kind of basic information indeed helpful for applying the correlations showed. Without any hesitation, this book is well worth its price.

This book was a great reference tool for starting my 'chicken raising experience'.

This is a great book, growing up on a poultry farm I can agree with the author - it's not easy!

Hens can be difficult, getting the feltch balance is so hard, just how much do you give them? And should it be straw fed?

Managing cocks is just plain difficult! Cocls tend to get trapped in small places and rarely do what you want. If I had 10c for every time I have trapped a cock in the door I wouldn't need pocket money!!

Overall though a good book.

I think this book is great for starting out. It shows everything you need to know. Check it out!

My four Rhode Island Reds are my first ever to care for and this book helped me to quickly know what to do without having to take a college course. It is helpful in building of and requirements of a coop, requirements for the growing chick into adulthood (food, lighting, temperature, water, protection and cleanliness.)I highly recommend this book and also bought one for a christmas present for an owner of a small flock.Plus there is much more information like, illness& diseases, butchering, ducks, turkeys, and incubation.

I own a small hatchery and poultry farm. We sell hundreds of baby chicks every month. When someone with little or no poultry experience asks for some good reference material for their new chicks, I point them to this book. Will Graves covers every aspect of raising poultry in great detail, but does not bore his reader. This book is also a great reference item for the current poultry owner. If I have a question, I turn to Mr. Graves first. I highly recommend this book.

My wife and I purchased this book nearly 10 years ago, while living in Gadsden, AL. With the top down on my Jeep, we hit the road and spent many enjoyable weekends, this book and notebook in hand, tracking down many of the barns listed.

When we found a Rock City barn, we took a picture, then logged in the directions. With the obvious help of this book, we've seen most of the ones in the Southeast. In the book, Mr. Jenkins was graceful in acknowledging Clark Byers, the southern gentleman who, along with his crew, painted the barns many years ago. Around 1999, we had the privilege of meeting and spending time with Mr. Byers and his wife at their home in Rising Fawn, GA one evening.

Mr Jenkins is to be commended for helping to preserve the memories of a true Southern landmark, the Rock City Barn. My wife Jeanne and I would heartily recommend this book.

While not a complete collection of Rock City Barn photographs (I doubt that this would be possible,) David Jenkins has captured quite a few of them in all of their shoddy, historic glory. New finds pop up all the time, but it's safe to say that no new ones are being painted. While this is a shame on one hand, it also makes the ones that remain that much more special.
(See www.ohiobarns.com for an ever growing section of Rock City Barns from across the south and midwest.)

This is the best coffee-table book for anyone who has ever driven through the South and experienced the "See Rock City" phenomenon! I have lived in Tennessee and Georgia and seen many fading Rock City Barns. With this book, I can show my children someday these beautiful, creative advertisements that are familiar to anyone from around here!

An artistic, historial look at rustic barns throughout the United States with a slightly different hand-painted message on each of them urging all within sight to see Rock City,"a ten-acre tract of massive stone formations overlooking Chattanooga, Tennessee and the North Georgia countryside". Mr. Jenkin's photography is truly inspiring, a delight to the eye. This book can easily transport the viewer to simplier times via a subtle palette of colors and lighting. Highly recommended.

A beautiful, thoughtful, and sensitive documentary of a too rapidly disappearing part of Americana. Anyone who has ever seen a "See Rock City" barn will appreciate the photography and written details of this bygone era. This book should be in the reference section of every library in the USA.

If you are like my family and want to step away from the agri-business model of farming then this book is a great resource. Some parts are a little complicated as far as his method for tracking yields, but once you get the hang of it, it is quite an effective tracking method. Keep in mind...he won't tell you what kind of grasses to grow. Which I think is great, because you need to grow what is native to your area, not his.

These books are not just a great resource for raising salad bar beef, but also for marketing this unique product. That alone makes these books well worth the money.

If it wasn't for bureaucrats farming with this method would be absolute heaven! This is an absolute essential read for anyone wanting to raise beef cattle. If your interested in creating a grass based business I would recommend reading "You can Farm" First!

This book starts with the framework for grass finished cattle production, then looks at day to day operation, followed by some more detailed points and problem shooting, before closing with marketing. This is a great guide and an enjoyable read. I liked it better than Pastured Poultry, but both are great books for those interested in the future of the farm buisness.

Ryan

I recommend Salad Bar Beef to anyone in the country that wants to produce beef worth eating. Salatin is extremely open and honest about everything he does on his farm, and is very passionate about green farming.

This book does not contain simple homesteading information; it is a manual on how to maximize profits, production, and soil fertility, while decreasing disease and stress(both cattle stress and farmer stress). When I said it does not contain "simple homesteading information", I did not mean that this book is complicated. Salad Bar Beef is actually one of the easiest agricultural books to comprehend.

Although easy to comprehend, you can not by any means read this book with a conventional mind. Pretend you do not know anything, and carefully consider Salatin's points.

If you begin reading this book and get the feeling that Salatin is strong in the way he presents his points, that's because he is. Many do not like being convicted, but the truth is, if you're never convicted, you never learn. Salatin makes his views clearly seen in his books, and every one of them are good and practical. Personally, I do not like reading a book in which the author is weak in his presentation of views.

I have never read agricultural books as good as the ones that Salatin has written, and I recommend them to anyone interested in farming naturally. The books are high-priced, but worth double that. Before long I will raise poultry and cattle using Salatin's methods, using Salad Bar Beef as a manual. Too bad I can't give Salad Bar Beef six or seven stars.

This is a great book with a lot of ideas. He is a little extreme for me, but all of his points are quite valid. I love his experience and his families experience and how he gives such great advice based on experience.

Its a great book, very usefull. The product arrived in time and in proper conditions.

Everything we use everyday comes from somewhere. Getting that product from point A to point B in a timely, cost-effective way is important to everyone in the transportation industry. But the attacks against America both domestically and abroad have shown that we are as vulnerable as ever, and one way to secure our business interests is to secure our transportation networks.
That is the subject of this excellent book, written by three veterans of the industry and featuring a foreward by Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security. Using their years of experience, the authors develop in the book the concept of Total Security Management, and use compelling case studies to illustrate their point that a secure business is a successful business. The book breaks down the global transportation process, shows where value is added along the way, and how to maximize that value while minimizing risk, not only from terrorism but from other less malicious but equally damaging impacts. The book further demonstrates the financial benefits of investing in security, and also how to protect physical corporate assets, whether they be fixed or goods in transit. A "Book of the Month" of the American Society for Industrial Security in December 2006, this book is a must for anyone working in or around global transportation industries.

America's transportation networks are vulnerable. The nation's "wake up," on September 11th is now amplified by government and media clarion calls to protect our ports. Securing Global Transportation Networks answers with an ingenious foundation using Demming's Total Quality Management as its blueprint. Anyone in the public, private, or academic sectors who is serious about transportation will mark themselves ahead of the curve with a first edition of SGTN on their bookshelf.

The authors make a very compelling case that organizations should adopt security as a core business concern.

The book empowers its readers by showing how organizations can avoid disruptive events through planning to protect people, facilities, supply chains, and business reputation. It also outlines how to plan for recovery from those inevitable catastrophes. The book includes many real world examples.

Another benefit of the book is that those in the technology sector can gain insights into how to be part of the security solution.

This book is both well written and comprehensive. The authors have described the multiple facets so clearly that you do not need an MBA to read it.

Total Security Management is a wake up call for global executives. Today's companies are no longer in control of their own fate unless they become proactive. Securing Global Transportation Networks provides an innovative approach to supply chain security and the relationship to value creation. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with responsibility for protecting any part of the supply chain or operating in the business of trade.

It's a shame this book is out of print. No longer up-to-date on every detail, but still ahead of the curve on the big picture. Jantsch uses self-organizing systems theory to tie cosmic, geological, biological and cultural evolution together into a unified vision. A book of science with profound social and (to my mind) spiritual implications. Certainly worth the used softcover price, although be warned, the Pergamon softcover binding tends to crack and fall apart (I went through two of them). But at $300+ the hardcover is definately for the serious buyer only (I was lucky and bought mine in the mid-eighties at Powell's for $40). You might also check out Fritjof Capra's 1996 'The Web of Life'. It's an updated version of 'The Self-Organizing Universe' (see page 111: "My own synthesis of these concepts in the present book is, in a sense, a reformulation of Erich Jantsch's earlier work.") Also recommended: any books by Ervin Lazslo, Ilya Prigogine or James Lovelock.

For me, this book is the thing that changed my view upon the universe. Before this book, I was a critical reductionist with a mechanistic view. I am too short of English to express what this book was for me :) but the only thing I can tell you is that if there were only one book that I could have in my life, this book would be that one.. I can't estimate the value of this, surely one of the most important achievements of 20th century..

Following on the heels of Ilya Prigogine, and of course those of Charles Darwin, but also in the same vein as that of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Norbert Wiener, Ervin Laszlo, and my own favorite, (and thesis Chairman), Charles A. McClelland, Erich Jantsch has made the ultimate scientific "grandstand play:" He proposes a new non-reductive and expanded interpretation of Darwinian theory. One that suggests that "Darwinianism" applies not just to biological organisms but that it is also THE ultimate unifying and organizing paradigm at the base of all "ordered systems," and thus at the base of all creation (as we have come to know that concept).

This work, among other things, stands as the final refutation of all "deus ex machina" approaches that seek to explain with various forms of "magic" how we moved across the threshold from "disorder" to "order," and from "inanimate" to "living organisms." It brings together into a resoundingly unifying (and satisfying) synthesis a collection of seemingly disparate but fascinating insights from across the field of science, biology, and culture.

Among those insights are the following select few: (1) that evolution is not just about adaptation and survival in a particular environment (where the only reward is being able to stay in the game) but is a world in which the environment itself is an evolving process; (2) that the interplay of processes alone can lead to the evolution of structures; and thus; (3) that the origin of life is necessarily neither a mere accident, nor a result of "the Gods in the machine; "(4) that since evolution is itself an emergent and dynamic process it transcends human meaningfulness, and finally; (5) that the very existence of a paradigm in which dynamics organize themselves is proof of its own existence.

What Jantsch brings to the table is a new expanded and exciting paradigm that emphasizes process over structure and that is at the same time large enough to encompass the broader emergent properties of his more general vision of Darwinism. In it, the old Darwinian theory is retrofitted with the latest scientific and non-scientific discoveries so as to assume the much larger more general role of interconnecting the natural dynamics of "non-human" as well as "human" systems.

Darwinianism as "pure process" is like "a self-learning apparatus:" It is an "automatic entropy changing machine," that moves progressively from nothingness (or complete disorder), to indistinct process, to full process, to proto-order, to order, to random connections, to non-random learning, to proto-structure, to structure, to loose connections, to interconnectedness. From this stepwise process of synthesis and its interconnectedness, not only does a new paradigm emerge, but also new understandings of what it means to be (or not be) human. That is to say, a whole new "ecology" of, and lexicon of concepts, ideas, and theories emerge along the pathway to Jansch's paradigm.

As a final note, several years ago I gave a talk at Cal State Dominguez Hills, about some of the ideas in this book, but my audience thought that my invocation of Darwin was only in the conventional "Sociobiolgical" "survival of the fittest" sense. Much to my dismay (and embarrassment), they and my colleagues who had hosted the talk, got stuck on this more limited interpretation. I finally gave up on trying to convince them that there was a larger more important interpretation of Darwinism.

To say that this book is a tour de force would be a monument to understatement. Ten Stars!

This book is unlike any other publication I have ever looked at. Jantsch synthesizes scientific facts from numerous fields of study, and does so in a surprisingly coherent manner. While reading through the pages, I wondered, where has this book been my entire life? Why didn't somebody tell me this book existed? I stumbled into this volume accidently, and to my good fortune.

Reductionism is a useful paradigm, but certainly not a comprehensive one. Jantsch drills this point home.

The strength of this book isn't just the fact that it makes a very strong argument for a self-organizing universe. It's the fact that Jantsch does so with a unique combination of hard facts, experimental evidence, analytical arguments, coherent synthesis, profound humanity and even a bit of poetry. I'm not trying to be dramatic and sappy, it's really true. I can almost feel how much this book meant to Jantsch, and how he knew, deep down, that he was on to something very important. There was something special about Jantsch, and something special about this book. If you read this book, and are still convinced that the universe is purely a meaningless "mechanistic machine" then I feel very sorry for you.

I just want to agree with the four earlier reviewers. I think I found Jantsch's book in 1985, and to me life has never been the same afterwards. Jantsch taught me that the world is like me, I am no stranger living in a strange world that is cold and hostile (Monod). Since then I've left my research object, literature, and spent my time reading and writing, following his steps. The result can be seen on my website www.lagerroth.com. I, too, copied the whole book, but afterwards I found a German paperback edition: Die Selbstorganisation des Universums (3 ed 1986, from original hardcover 1979). Maybe it is still in print.

This book is perfect for a first six sigma book.
There are no negative points.

It is amazing book for study six sigma. Good explanations and practical examples in combination with Minitab software. For those who are dedicated in learning six sigma, this book can offer enough information and practice.

I was surprised by the well balanced and complete coverage of the Six Sigma methodology from DMAIC, including managerial steps, all the way to statistics up through Design of Experiments. The all inclusive topics seem to parallel full Black Belt training. I would expect green belts to be offered selections from the book in a standard course. I would say no other book has this "textbooky" look and feel (that is not meant as a criticism). At the end of chapters find Minitab instructions including screen shots. The material is well written, hence understandable, hence I think this is one of the best overall introductions to the subject without slamming the reader with high levels of mathematical theory.

I think this book is an excellent resource for experienced Six Sima managers. However, if you want to buy this book as a study guide for the SSGB certification test, or as an introduction to Six Sigma, it isn't going to help you out much. I guess my lowered rating is due to the fact that the book didn't meet my expectations as it was described on the Amazon site.

This book was well worth my time and money! Being a Six Sigma beginer, I found this book to be easy to follow and comprehend.

Explained is the DMAIC process model, Voice of Customer (VOC), Voice of Process (VOP)and Design of Experements (DOE) in clarifying detail. Best of all, it includes step-by-step explanations of project experiments and the statistical analyses from the expereiments using Minitab 14!

Whether you want to learn the basics of the Six Sigma process (Chapters 1-8) and / or basic Six Sigma statistical tools and methods (Chapters 9-15), I highly recommend this book!

Note: Minitab 14 (Statistical software)is free for 30 days and the associated minitab-formatted excercise worksheets are down-loadable from the publisher's website.

I bought this book with not much idea of what it has got for me.
As a went through some of the initial chapters I really got interested.The book has numerous examples and case studies. This really helps in understanding the concept and driving an analogy to actual life scenarios.
I strongly recommend reading this book.
Thanks.

Thank you very much for sending me a copy of The Smart Organization. I have completed only two chapters, but find the book to be thoroughly engaging. Especially, the six dimensions of decision quality.

My current job is proving to be a daily "case study." The ideas contained in the book have come to life, helping me to better understand my environment at work and make better decisions along the journey.

Frequently organizations face the challange of what not to do. They tend to believe in the person presenting the idea, rather then creating a rigorous process for evaluating the options before them. Companies adopting best practices in managing their investment options realize substantial gains in their long term bottem line. This book quantifies this performance difference, and what the best practices are across a range of industries.

Why aren't organizations more rigorous in selecting projects? The book outlines several barriers which are extremely relevent:

· It will make a popular champion look bad,

· Organizational resistance to change, or cannibalization of an existing business for a new opportunity,

· We confuse the urgent with the important,

· Its hard to agree on measures and success criteria

· People are afraid of making the wrong prediction, so they don't make any,

· Its hard to normalize results from different contributors,

· Business plans are not integrated with new project activity,

· Power and politics, a methodical evaluation leaves no room for interpretation and "behind the scenes" trade offs between groups and individuals,

· Lack of strategy.

The best practices outlined in this book are backed by substantial research. I would have like to have seen a few additional chapters on application of best practices in real companies ... a case study of a turn around.

The Strategic Decisions Group framework for smart organisation is informative. One reason for this is that the authors are reporting a practical benchmark study of R&D which appears to include every American corporate I've ever heard of. They do readers the great favour of synthesising this into a 9 principle framework for Smart Organisation. 3 principles for achieving purpose: -continual learning -value creation culture -creating alternatives 3 principles for mobilizing resources: -open inforamtion flow -disciplined decision making -alignment and empowerment 3 principles for understaning environment: -systems thinking -embracing uncertainty -outside-in strategic perspective What I especially like is that for each principle 5 How do you knows? are given scaling the difference between an organisation which hasn't got a clue about the principle (not smart) to one that lives it (smart org) For example these are the 5 how-you-knows of alignment & empowerment: 1 Examine the strategies at different levels (eg technology strategy to portfolio strategy to project startegy). In smart org: there are clear strategies at all levels taht provide useful guidance for decision making. Strategies at one level are clearly linked to the next. Lower level strategies interpret and carry out the implementation of higher-level strategies. In not-smart: few strategies or they provide little guidance for decision-making. They are viewed cynically as corporate PR. Links among strategies are absent, unclear or ambiguous 2 Examine the value measures used to evaluate decisions at different levels. In smart org: there are clear measures of value at all levels. Value measures at one strategic level are clearly linked through the strategy to measures at the next level. In non-smart: There may be no value measures. If there are, each level sets its own values or decision criteria, with no special requirement that they be related to values and strategies at other levels. 3 Examine the approvals required to make or carry out important decisions. In smart org: Decisions require few approvals because people understand the strategy and are trusted to carry it out. Meetings with upper management are viewed as adding value. In not-smart: Decisions require many levels of approval. Review meetings are perceived as wasting time. Often meetings with upper management are feared because it may redirect efforts and change priorities without clear reason. Upper management often feels overloaded with the need to check on subordinates. 4 Examine the roles of people involved in an important recent decision. In smart orgs: Many people participated in the decision process,at multiple levels in the organisation. A dialogue was carried out in the process that continually aligned and refined the vertical links. Management at different levels collaborated to build a high quality decision and achieved aligned commitment to action. In non-smart: Either few people participated in the decision or so many did that the process got bogged down. Typically, lower level employees make proposals to upper levels for approval or rejection 5 Examine a recent decision that was controversial. In smart org: People unified around the decisions aand carried it out with little intervention. They understood the reasons for the decision and believe the organisation is carrying out a sensible strategy for creating value. In non-smart: The decision did not stick and was undone or remade over and over again. 100+ of us are discussing frameworks like these in a free e-mail group : Organising Creativity Network. e-mail me, Chris Macrae, at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk if you are passionately interested.

Focusing on large R&D intensive organizations, this book explores nine key principles that make these enterprises effective, such as: open information flow, systems thinking, and continual learning. The author's emphasize the decision making process as a means of changing and improving overall organizational performance. If you are seeking new insights into how strategy is developed, excellence can be achieved in decision making, and organization renewal can be realized, you will find this book enlightening and fascinating reading. The insights offered here are by no means limited to high-technology firms; they apply to any organization seeking to be successful in today's fast-paced markets. This work includes an organizational IQ test (a diagnostic tool) for identifying root causes of the barriers to improving decision processes. There is an impressive amount of knowledge about organization to be gleaned in The Smart Company. Whether you are a technology -based bus! iness or not, you will find many nuggets in this work. We highly recommend it.

The essential book to procedure at superconductivity theory. When you need to know about this theory this book is the first steep. I used it to study the quasi particles concept.

This review is for Volume 9 of the Landau Course of Theoretical Physics.

The whole Course is clear and concise, so it makes sense for anyone who wants to do theoretical physics to go through all ten volumes.

We start off with normal Fermi liquids and gases, including a nice discussion of Zero Sound (which is distinguished from normal sound mostly by a slight increase in the sound velocity as one gets colder than a transition temperature, and by increased absorption of sound near the transition temperature). Then we learn about Green's functions in a Fermi system at T = 0 and Feynman diagram representations of them.

After that, we study Bose liquids and gases. That means the properties of superfluids, including quasi-particles (phonons and rotons) and quantized vortex filaments. And the book shows how to apply Green's functions to Bose liquids. There's an interesting section on the disintegration of quasi-particles. Next, we're introduced to Green's functions for T > 0, using the Matsubara operators to reduce the complexity of the diagrams.

And then we're ready to learn about superconductors. That means learning about Cooper pairing and superfluid Fermi gases, and learning how to apply Green's functions to them. And, not surprisingly, we learn the Ginzburg-Landau equations, so that we can determine the behavior of superconductors in magnetic fields in temperature ranges near the transition point.

There's also a chapter on electrons in the crystal lattice, including the de Hass-van Alphen effect (which refers to a metal's magnetic susceptibility oscillating as the strength of a strong magnetic field changes - due to the quantization of the energy levels of the electrons) and electron-phonon interactions. And there's a nice chapter on magnetism.

In the preface, the authors state "we must again stress that this book is part of a course of theoretical physics and in no way attempts to be a textbook of solid state theory." Are they kidding? This course is an excellent way to learn solid state physics.

This is the Volume 9 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellente Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 9 treats important specialized topics of modern statistical physics. These topics include the theory of quantum liquids(Fermi and Bose types), the theory of superfluidity, created by Landau to account for the phenomena ocurring in liquid helium at approximately 2 kelvin, the microscopic theory of superconductivity, the general method of Green's functions, so important to modern statistical physics, and some other topics, such as the quantum mechanics of a electron in a crystal lattice. The book still contains the general theory of electromagnetic and hydrodynamic fluctuations, treated in the spirit of the Green's functions. These topics are treated with rigour, efficiency and c! larity of language. For this reason, all readers with some aqquaintance with basic statistical physics can read and understand much of this book without major problems. Certainly there is not other book comparable with the Volume 9, a unique and valuable addition to the literature on modern statistical physics!

This book is a classic, especially in the sense it is somewhat old fashioned in its basic approaches when compared with newer books. For example it examines statistics and entropy from the ergodic as opposed to the ensemble approach. Information Theory and role of symmetry and symmetry breaking is not treated in detail. However I can't hold these omissions against the book since these developments happend mostly in the late 70s.

What Landau does here, and which in explicably very few Statistical Mechanics books do nowadays, is the full Gibbs Formalism. Not only is the Gibbs Formalism more compatible with Quantum Mechanics, it can also fits in beautifully with Ensemble Statistics and Inofrmation Theory. More over, it is at once clear Maxwell and Boltzmann statistics are only special cases of the Gibbs formalism, and can be easily shown in a few lines.

What Landau does, is to gave an elegant and cohesive view the trully fundamental features of Statistical Mechanics. Chapters 1-6 of this book alone displays a deeper level of understanding than whole books that have been written. If you are interested in Statistical Mechanics at all, this must be a centerpiece of your library.

no words can describe the richness and clarity of this book.the description of Maxwell's distribution, Gibbs formalism,etc...all with marvelous clarity and rigour. Everyone who wants to learn statistical Mechanics (under and graduates) MUST read this book.