The Solid State: An Introduction to the Physics of Crystals for Students of Physics, Materials Science, and Engineering

When reading books of solid state physics, apart from the mathematics and quantum mechanics, the overall understanding is much influenced from solid knowledge of the fundamental concepts. This is the book you should read before embarking in deeper study of the physics of solid state. Indeed, this book is a gem; it clarifies all the basics, and is highly satisfactory in breadth and depth. It is also excellent for reviewing. THe book is very actual in the topics selection, concise, pretty self-contained and, above all, thin. It also has a very nice section on amorphous materials that is not commonly found in introductory solid state books. I hope you will enjoy it as much as i did!

I also used this book as a physics graduate student. The book is useful for materials physicists who want a more pictorial, textual description before diving into mathematical treatment of the subject material. Or, very useful as a companion to a more rigorous text.

This book is short, easy to read, yet it gives the reader a simple but clear picture of the solid state. It was used as a reference book for the introductory solid state physics course which I took in my first year of graduate study at Harvard. I enjoyed the book a lot.

A small and easy to understand text, not too much math