no words can describe the richness and clarity of this book.the description of Maxwell's distribution, Gibbs formalism,etc...all with marvelous clarity and rigour. Everyone who wants to learn statistical Mechanics (under and graduates) MUST read this book.

This book is a classic, especially in the sense it is somewhat old fashioned in its basic approaches when compared with newer books. For example it examines statistics and entropy from the ergodic as opposed to the ensemble approach. Information Theory and role of symmetry and symmetry breaking is not treated in detail. However I can't hold these omissions against the book since these developments happend mostly in the late 70s.

What Landau does here, and which in explicably very few Statistical Mechanics books do nowadays, is the full Gibbs Formalism. Not only is the Gibbs Formalism more compatible with Quantum Mechanics, it can also fits in beautifully with Ensemble Statistics and Inofrmation Theory. More over, it is at once clear Maxwell and Boltzmann statistics are only special cases of the Gibbs formalism, and can be easily shown in a few lines.

What Landau does, is to gave an elegant and cohesive view the trully fundamental features of Statistical Mechanics. Chapters 1-6 of this book alone displays a deeper level of understanding than whole books that have been written. If you are interested in Statistical Mechanics at all, this must be a centerpiece of your library.

This is the Volume 9 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellente Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 9 treats important specialized topics of modern statistical physics. These topics include the theory of quantum liquids(Fermi and Bose types), the theory of superfluidity, created by Landau to account for the phenomena ocurring in liquid helium at approximately 2 kelvin, the microscopic theory of superconductivity, the general method of Green's functions, so important to modern statistical physics, and some other topics, such as the quantum mechanics of a electron in a crystal lattice. The book still contains the general theory of electromagnetic and hydrodynamic fluctuations, treated in the spirit of the Green's functions. These topics are treated with rigour, efficiency and c! larity of language. For this reason, all readers with some aqquaintance with basic statistical physics can read and understand much of this book without major problems. Certainly there is not other book comparable with the Volume 9, a unique and valuable addition to the literature on modern statistical physics!

I have been reading the Livanova's book again and again since undergraduate to the present PhD studies. To my knowledge this is the more detailed book about the great physicist and teacher Lev Davidovitch Landau, the unmistakable ``Dau''.

You'll find in this book an impressive amount of details about Dau himself, about his world wide famous style as a physicist, his school on theoretical physics, the theoretical minimum, the relationship with his pupils, etc..

Above all, and the most important, you will find Dau own advice about what, when and how to study to become an eventual theoretical physicist in Landau's high professional tradition. It is a very nontrivial advice!

I have been reading the Livanova's book again and again since undergraduate to the present PhD studies. To my knowledge this is the more detailed book about the great physicist and teacher Lev Davidovitch Landau, the unmistakable ``Dau''. You'll find in this book an impressive amount of details about Dau himself, about his world wide famous style as a physicist, his school on theoretical physics, the theoretical minimum, the relationship with his pupils, etc.. Above all, and the most important, you will find Dau own advice about what, when and how to study to become an eventual theoretical physicist in Landau's high professional tradition. It is a very nontrivial advice!

This is the Volume 4 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellent Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 4 treats the subject of quantum electrodynamics. It contains all of basic material on quantum electrodynamics and the whole of the theory of radiation. This book, although very dense, describes with clarity the large amount of topics contained in it and does not include topics not firmly established, such as the theory of strong and weak interactions. All physicists specialized in quantum electrodynamics must possess this remarkable book. A superb book!

This is an outstanding book. The former students of the great Russian physicist Lev Landau wrote a text based on his teaching and his papers, as well as on their own work. The result fits well in the magnificent Theoretical Physics course that carries the names of Landau and Lifshitz. There are differences between this text and the western analogues. Dirac equation is derived in a very elegant way using spinors, and the whole algebra of Dirac matrices becomes, in this way, much more natural, particularly, as one would expect, Lorentz invariance. The renormalization problem is treated in a very lucid way. The derivation of the Ward identities is very simple and amusing. High energy limits are treated in the Landau style, and well complements the more formal derivations based on the renormalization group. No book presents as many applications of quantum electrodynamics as this one, except perhaps, the old and dated book by Heitler.

This is the Volume 10 and the last of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellent Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 10 treats the difficult subject of processes ocurring in systems not in statistical equilibrium. The book is very dense, but its language is clear, a characteristic of all the books written by Landau and Lifshitz. The authors put in the book the more important branches of physical kinetics. These topics include a chapter on the kinetic theory of gases, three chapters on the physics of plasmas(highly ionized gases), transport processes in metals, insulators, superconductors, quantum liquids and the kinetics of phase transitions, among other topics. Certainly no other similar book can be found in which all these topics are treated at the same time with efficiency and detail as in the Volume 10. Certainly a book that is becoming a classic on the physics of systems not in statistical equilibrium, and obrigatory to those interested in the subject!

This is a magnificent book carefully crafted by two of the leading theorists of the twentieth century. If you have a basic grounding in mechanics, vector analysis and tensor analysis then much of this book will be accessible. The early parts of the book are concerned with Special Relativity and the classical electromagnetic field using the action principle and tensor form of Maxwell's Equations. Later in the book there is in depth presentation of the General Theory of Relativity. This is very much a reference book rather than one to approach these subjects for the first time. There are no exercises or problems but it is a truly masterly work and well worth the money spent upon it and time invested studying it.

This is the Volume 2 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz. All serious students of theoretical physics must possess the ten volumes of this excellent Course, which cover in detail and rigour practically all the branches of theoretical physics. The Volume 2 treats the subject of microscopic electrodynamics(electromagnetic fields in vacuum) and the whole of the theory of relativity. The book opens with the special relativity and, with this basis, constructs a detailed theory of the electromagnetic fields in vacuum, moreover including the theory of diffraction of the light. The last five chapters describes all the basic concepts of general relativity and some more specialized topics, such as the gravitational collapse, gravitational waves and in the last chapter, an excellent account of relativistic cosmology. It is noteworthy as the authors describe elegantly and efficiently all these subjects in the same book. A unique book!

When I need the real explanation of something concerning relativity, electromagnetism or gravitation, I know this is the place to go. I know I will find the essence of the problem clearly yet tersely written. Some highlights: the derivation of the retarded Green function, where a clever mathematical analogy avoids lots of contour integration; the frequent use of the powerful Hamilton-Jacobi equation, again avoiding long Riemannian-geometry computations; the explanation of why nothing, not even light, can escape the attraction of a black hole. When it overlaps with Jackson's rightly famous textbook on Electrodynamics, you'll see the difference between a good (Jackson's) and a remarkable book. Though not up to date in matters of cosmology, it is still the starting point to be recommended.

Anyone, who takes a course in classical mechanics based on the book on Goldstein should take Landau's book as well. It is indeed complementary to Goldstein in two respect: it first gives a very short but very concise presentation of mechanics. This is invaluable for exam preparations. Second, the language used by Landau should be taken as an example as how to prepare scientific work. In few words, Landau is superb and a master of packing complete aspects of physics. Even later, Landau is a lot of help just by looking up his wording on topics. But it should be used with another advanced textbook such as Goldstein's. If one does that, the rewards will be very rich later.

Landau & Lifshz "Course of Theoretical Physics"is a famous and respected set of books in Physics. Unfortunately, Butterworth-Heinemann, who currently prints those books in English, prints them with very poor quality. The books seems to be "printed" in old copy machines (old Xerox or Nashua machines) and the paper used is also a cheap one. In many pages, it is really hard to read the text, due to such poor printing.

This book(and very hotly contested by their Classical Theory of Fields) has to be the most gorgeous exposition on classical physics to be found. Crystal clear, yet concise and perfectly logical as is to be expected from all of Landau's works. The material is so beautifully developed that this is one of the few places where it is possible to see how each piece of the classical mechanics puzzle fits together. If not for the rest of the book, the sections on the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation, Maupertuis Principle and a small but absolutely incredible section on mechanical similarity are simply a must read. Goldstein(the general) standard suffers from several defects, notably logical inconsistency within the own text(A complaint that can never be made of any of Landau's books). Above all, This book is the perfect keystone to the remaining books of their series, and as such should be read before attempting any of the remaining volumes.

Lastly regarding criticisms that this book does not tend itself to non-integrability and classical chaos I suppose these are justified statments, but considering that this book was never written with such goals in mind, the arguments are irrelevant. There are several excellent references available on such material(including a recently added section in Goldstein) which will satisfy people looking for such topics. But this volume should feature on the bookshelf of anyone that has any interest in classical mechanics and wishes to read the treatment of the subject by a master.