This is my first message in the forum, although I have been reading it for some months. I am self studying physics, I have some background on electromagnetism, since I am a Telecommunication engineer. Thank you all so much. I'm not so sure about Griffiths. Participating in this forum, I've the impression that many people get confused by his textbooks on electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, but I cannot really judge this, because I haven't read the books carefully myself. This gives a good introduction to the my first book of quantum physics without overemphasizing wave mechanics as some older textbooks. From the book description for J. It provides a graduate-level, non-historical, modern introduction of quantum mechanical concepts for first year graduate students. Shankar goes nice and slow, and covers all of the mathematics in sufficient form for a first course. He is primarily a teacher, and it shows in his writing. But before either you will want to become familiar with Feynman's volume on Quantum Mechanics. It's basically a cookbook on differential equations and integration by parts but at least it focuses a lot more on actual physics rather than waste tons of time on formalism. This is just my personal taste but I hate books that try my first book of quantum physics pretend physics is math. In fact their treatment of all perturbation methods are quite amazing. Griffiths on the other hand is quite terrible for perturbation methods; his development of degenerate perturbation theory is confusing at best and his chapter on time-dependent perturbation theory should really contain problems that are more varied in applications. I have heard that Ballentine and Sakurai are very good books, but I believe that they are not introductory text, which is what I am looking for actually. I think you could probably get away with it but its wise to start slow and build up. I would start with Susskinds text: There is associated videos as well: Thanks Bill So, maybe it would be a good idea to read Griffiths, complemented with Shankar for the formalism. Actually, the subject is so standardized that most books are about the same. Usually for self-studying one has to read expositions from many people, because each book may be obscure on one point for any particular reader. So usually one can ask on this forum, or also google for the many free lecture notes available to see how other people explain a point. But other concrete calculations will do just as well - the spectra of atoms, the properties of materials etc. This is important because this structure carries over to quantum field theory without any changes tiny lie here because of eg. For this purpose, apart from Shankar, or Sakurai and Napolitano, many books on quantum computation are very good, eg. Nielsen and Chuang or Preskill's notes. The most important development here, which possibly even Feynman did not known about, is that potential solutions exist, eg. It is here that I recommend Landau and Lifshitz and Weinberg. I'm not sure about which nominally undergraduate textbook one should recommend. Many are oversimplifying the subject, which ironically makes it more difficult, because you have to forget wrong conceptions built up in the reader's mind. There are excellent older books like Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Messiah, Landau+Lifshitz vol. Particularly in the latter book you find a lot of applications usually not treated in other textbooks. For me Ballentine is, contrary to atyy's opinion, the best book on interpretational issues, because it follows the no-nonsense approach of the minimal statistical interpretation that I prefer myself. Another very good book on this topic is A. Peres, Quantum Theory: Methods and Concepts but you should deal with interpretation questions only after you have a good working knowledge of quantum theory. For me Ballentine is, contrary to atyy's opinion, the best book on interpretational issues, because it follows the no-nonsense approach of the minimal statistical interpretation that I prefer myself. I think you can guess my view from my signature - and I don't agree on this one with Atty. But no need to start with it - its not a race - start slowly and work your way up. Thanks Bill it depends on up to which level you want to read. For most people it is probably be best to start with another more physics oriented book such as Griffith. Sakurai was used in the non-mandatory quantum mechanics course in year 4. Since you are a telecommunication engineer, you probably have enough mathematical background to consider. Especially if you are a specialist in Lie algebra aspects of telecommunication engineering. Have you ever seen a book on mathematics for engineers. That reminds me of an anecdote I experienced. A mathematician specialized in category theory wanted to do a PhD in mathematical physics, so he needed to learn some physics, especially quantum field theory. So he asked my college who was a particle phenomenologist and hated any form of too abstract mathematics to explain something to him. The moral is, to recommend book or explain something to somebody with a different background than mine, I should understand his background first. I must make myself think like him. That's why I like to read books on physics at very different levels. Physics for mathematicians, physics for philosophers, physics for theoretical physicists, physics for experimentalists, physics for engineers, physics for dummies, physics for lay people. If you always read only one kind of physics books, no matter how expert you are in this, you are not qualified to make recommendations for people with a background different from yours. Especially my first book of quantum physics you are a specialist in Lie algebra aspectsNo Lie algebra background is needed to read my book; whatever is needed in this respect is explained from scratch. I know that a good telecommunication engineer will know all the stuff I assume in my book. For I happen know a lot about the mathematics needed in telecommunications - primarily I am an applied mathematician, not a physicist. If you always read only one kind of physics books, no matter how expert you are in this, you are not qualified to make recommendations for people with a background different from yours. If you don't know which physics books and which telecommunications books I have seen you are not qualified to make such a remark.
