Physical Chemistry of Surfaces

I am a researcher in industry and used a borrowed copy of the fifth edition to learn about some of the issues that we were having in our equipment. As others have noted, this may not be a good text book as it is not self-contained, and I found it is inconsistent at some places. However, it fit the bill perfectly for my own needs, and I look forward to having it permanently on my bookshelf

How useful and valuable this book is largely depends on what you expect from it. This book provies an overview of the extremely broad field of surface chemistry. As a starting point to learning about that field, this book is excellent. There is validity to the criticisms offered by some other reviewers of this text. The derivations often don't give enough detail and there's not much help in the way of example problems, which can make it difficult for the student to use in a classroom setting. Do not expect extremely detailed and thorough treatments of any particular area of surface chemistry. Nearly any chapter in this book could (and does) have entire texts (and courses) devoted exclusively to that one subject. What you can expect from this book is an introduction to the key areas of surface chemistry. The book is loaded with references to point the interested reader in the right direction for more detailed and thorough treatments of the variety of different areas of surface chemistry. For this reason, I have found it to be a good starting point for learning more about several subjects. In short, this book is excellent if you want a broad overview of the field or need a place to start learning about a particular area of surface chemistry. It's not worth much if you are looking for extremely in depth, thorough treatments of specific areas of surface chemistry.

I like this book, though I hate the subject. If you write to Adamson (get your advisor or whoever to do it) you can get an excellent hand-written solution manual to all the problems, and he's prompt too. Explanations are pretty good, and there's a long list of references in case you want to find original papers.