Introduction to Statistical Physics

Rating:
Summary: Concise theory, straight to examples and applications
Review: This was my undergraduate textbook at Univ. Fed. do Ceara,
Brazil, though the version used was the portuguese one by a
different publisher (I have compared both and they seem to
be pretty much the same). Salinas is an influential and
respected professional at Univ. Sao Paulo and is currently
one of the leading physicits in Brazil. His book was heavily
influenced by classic treatments such as Reif, Callen and Huang,
as he himself recognizes. However, apart from dedicating
six chapters on modern topics ranging from phonons and magnons
to nonequilibrium methods, its clear-cut structure, conciseness
and selected examples makes it unique and I strongly recommend
it to any serious undergraduate or graduate course. It should be
noted that it has a very pragmatic perspective, adopting usually
very simple and economic derivations before going straight to
examples and applications. For those that prefer a more
discursive approach I would advise to have Reif's book nearby
in order to clarify some passages. Another important feature I
found in this book was the well balanced selection of exercices,
allowing one to solve all of them on the basis of the theories
presented alone. In summary, I think it was a gift from Springer
to us in publishing Salina's original text and only hope other
colleagues can appreciate it.