Nathaniel > Books: academic‎ (18)

This is a thick book, and I was skeptical when I began reading it that the book would hold up in an internet age. When you can look up the weight of t

This is a thick book, and I was skeptical when I began reading it that the book would hold up in an internet age. When you can look up the weight of the moon on wolfram|alpha, what use is a textbook of this form?

But the strength of Carroll's An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics isn't in the raw data. It's in the full and comprehensive analysis of such an incredibly broad scope of material. The book is not only a great reference. If you read it cover to cover, you'll learn the answers to questions you never knew you had. There's both the depth of expertise and the scope necessary to converse on any topic. I'd recommend this book for anyone who needs or wants to hold conversations with astrophysicists.

Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis provides a pretty decent grounding in Real Analysis. Anyone who does anything with calculus should probabl

Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis provides a pretty decent grounding in Real Analysis. Anyone who does anything with calculus should probably read it.

That said, it isn't a perfect primer. The proofs can be difficult to follow, and the language is very high-level. Some chapters suffer from a lack of examples or explanation. To get the most out of this book, it really has to be a classroom companion; you're not going to get too much out of just reading it in your spare time.