An Introduction to Statistical Thermodynamics (Dover Books on Physics)

I'm a second year grad student coming from some measure of background in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, but with no experience in statistical mechanics. I found Hill's book a fantastic introduction to the topic. Of particular note is his terse but clear writing - he very quickly and accurately conveys requisite information in each of his derivations, making the text easily understandable. I've had none of the problems of ambiguities or a lack of clarity that can be encountered in many physics textbooks. I can highly recommend this title, it's one of the better written physics textbooks I've seen.

I am a devout follower of this book - it's written by a genius for people who really want to understand stat thermoD, not just to prepare for classes, but to gain a perspective on how to handle the tedious mathematical structure of stat themoD. I am absolutely in love with this book and have found it to be much much more challenging and interesting that other comparable books, which border on spoon feeding its reader with every morbid detail (most of which are often quite basic concepts). It's to the point, written with authority. He covers quite a large number of topics. Although the book is quite old, its structure is very appealing to me. Those who like succinct equations to try and understand a concept - they would love with this book, right from the very first chapter. This book has another complementary book by the same author ( Statistical Mechanics: Principles and Selected Applications ) which takes things a step further. People who prefer long discussions rather than equations would absolutely hate this book. I would strongly reccommend everybody to take a chance with this book. I am a beginner only and do not have a good idea about the other books out there - but I find this book much more useful than those by Landau or Macquarrie (although I dunno about Chandler or Kardar or Pahtria). People with a decent math background who are looking to learn stat mech should absolutely try this out and it's so damn cheap - wouldn't hurt if you don't like it eventually. But I like this book so much that I would even volunteer to be a spokesperson for it :P

In my opinion is one of the best introductory book in statistical thermodynamics. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of books and even good books treating this topic, but T.L. Hill has been able to introduce it in a simple and comprehensive way. In particular, I found particularly interesting his manner to treat the liquid state and the distribution functions (Part III). The last part is devoted to quantum statistics, it is an introduction but is well written and for a young student will be enlightening.

It's a standard, and essential to anyone who needs the reference. Anyone who likes/needs a book on this topic should have it in their library. Be sure to remember that the level is upper college to graduate level.

This was the textbook in the statistical mechanics course I took a few years ago. The single greatest feature of this book compared to so many other texts in statistical mechanics and related fields is its clear presentation of some sort of intuition behind the concepts. That alone makes it worth buying. And it's so cheap that you may as well just buy it.

Terrell Hill addresses the reader as if he were lecturing to me. His style is one of clarity.The book is excellent. What I like least. I would have liked to see solutions to problems.

This introductory text is a fine way to gain a solid, albeit somewhat dated, introduction to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It will be especially useful to students and workers in molecular biophysics, and physical chemistry.

I bought this book as recommended material for a class, mainly because the cost is very low due to this being a Dover book. Typically I do not read entire text books, I use them more as a reference to revisit material that I did not fully understand in class or as a source for practice problems. Compared to the other text books I had available I found this book not particularly useful. The notation used is not the most intuitive and I found it hard to search this book for specific information. Throughout the entire term I probably got 2 useful pieces of information from this book, and read ~5 pages out of the total, and that was mainly because specific problems on the homework for my class directly referenced to this book. For the remainder of the time I looked for information elsewhere. The reason I still give this book 3 stars is due to how affordable it is compared to other textbooks. Despite the fact that other textbooks are easier to read this book does contain most of the important concepts, if money is a consideration this can be a good buy.

Tutto bene, spedizione celere ed accurata, libro secondo le mie richieste. Per chi vuole iniziare a studiare la termodinamica statistica questo è un libro eccellente.

I have just ordered it and already checked out only the first two chapters and found that the book is well-written at least in the beginning part. I will give a more detailed review after I have gone through the whole book. With this price, the book is worth buying!

El libro lo compre como de segunda pero es de primera. El libro está nuevo!!

Arrived in a timely matter and in perfect condition. If you have ever bought a Dover publication text, you should know the quality to expect. The title is a bit of a misnomer. I wouldn’t recommend the text for someone first learning statistical thermodynamics. Thankfully I have had previous study on the topic otherwise I feel I would have been quite lost reading this one.

This book is wonderful