I had this textbook for one of my fourth year undergrad courses. It seemed that Hook & Hall know what they are talking about, but they certainly couldn't explain it to me. Perhaps this text may be useful for graduate studies or as a reference, but I could not recommend it for an introductory course to solid state physics.

When Professor Hall lectured Solid State Physics on an undergraduate course at Manchester he deviated from the approach taken in the book, which surprised me somewhat. I'll come back to this later.

The book is very sound if somewhat idiosyncratic. In particular, I found that Hook and Hall used explanatory devices quite different to those followed by my other lecturers, and by most other textbooks. This could be a good or a bad thing, depending on your mental aptitude and/or fondness for their exposition.

I suspect the reason Hall used a different approach in lectures was to tie in with the way we learnt related subject material at Manchester (solid state being just one of three or four compulsory 2nd year courses dealing with atomic and sub-atomic matter).

This is not to say that anything in the book is misleading. It's very well-written and comprehensive, and if this is a subject that you want to learn more about than you can in general texts, I can recommend it as it helped me on several occasions. Perhaps spend half an hour with it in the library or bookshop before buying.

I could not find a better text on solid state at this level when I took my degree in 1995 (IIRC the first edition of Hook-Hall was 1970's, the second early 90's), but that situation may have changed by now.

the major players in this book were so thougoughly unlikeable that it flavored [negatively] nearly every page. Author goes into exhaustive detail about the minutea of these womens' lives. The greater part of the book was taken up with Hall's youth, Una Lady troubridge and a russian nurse; , of whom she was embarrasingly enamoured. If prospective readers enjoy tortured prose,a woman of some talent but a larger ego,and a great deal of egomaniacal self justification you are going to love this book!

Jeremy Silman, author of "How To Reassess Your Chess," and "The Amateur's Mind" wrote a comprehensive review which you can find at InsideChess.com. Summarizing: the Steinitz line 4...Qh4 is more dubious than ever particularly now because of Peter Well's book "The Scotch Game" which has newer, Grandmaster lines that either refute or weaken Black's optimistic assessments. Silman believes that this book could confuse weaker players with outdated analysis, although players interested in their own research will enjoy not having to "reinvent the wheel" and find out that a certain line has already been tested and found wanting.

Get excited. Animate your voice. Use props. But nothing at all to back it up.

The tape is low quality and sounds like it was recorded at a bingo-hall during intermission.

Not only couldn't the host tell a good story, he seemed very amused with himself --for instance by uncontrollably giggling at his own jokes and antics--.

Shame on Mr. Hall and his publisher for marketing this tape!

Get excited. Animate your voice. Use props. But nothing at all to back it up.

The tape is low quality and sounds like it was recorded at a bingo hall during intermission.

Not only couldn't the host tell a good story, he was more amused with himself (for instance by uncontrollably giggling at his own jokes and antics) than really teaching what story telling is really about.

Shame on Mr. Hall and his publisher for marketing this tape!

Most of this audiobook appears to be an excerpt out of one Mr. Hall's seminars. The seminars might be good, but the audiobook is practically worthless. It provides basically no useful information, except for some simple common sense --- that a strong story, good props, and good voice make an effective storyteller. That info is nice, but the audiobook fails to tell you how to improve these key ingredients. Don't make the same mistake I did by buying this audiobook.

This book purports to be a college text for discrete math. It is terrible. There aren't nearly enough examples in the book. Explanations are woefully brief, giving one sentence to the definition of a set intersection, for example. Many new concepts sneak up on you without ever being discussed. In one instance it started using a point by point proof method without ever introducing that method. The rules given in some proofs are not defined earlier, leaving the reader to wonder what the authors are doing in their proof. The use of Haskel is another downside. There is no way to check your proofs aside from the proof checker software included which will drive a person to complete insanity. The software is so terribly picky in its syntax, you take more time verifying your proof than actually coming up with it. When there are errors with your syntax, it doesn't give a meaningful message. This is more the fault of Haskel, however. Nevertheless, it is the fault of the authors to choose this terrible method for teaching. Garbage.

This was one of the first non-Doyle Holmes stories that I picked up to read, and I was quite disappointed. The plot is thin, and Andrews tries to capture the spark of the Watson-Holmes relationship without much success. Frankly, I think the book is somewhat boring. Since this book I have found numerous other non-Doyle stories that are very good.