This book is definitely not a book you can read through quickly but a book where you find out information through your life.

If you are a scientist and interested in solid state physics like semiconductor or metal, this is also a good book to get a good guide and introduction.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Without parallel in Materials Science literature  Jan 22, 2002 By Dr. Osvaldo F. Schilling
This book has no parallel in the literature of theoretical materials science. The information contained in the book allows first principle calculations of properties of important technological materials like perovskite oxides, semiconductors, etc. I would suggest the reader to consult the papers by R. Haydock and others in Solid State Physics, vol.35 of 1980 to
complemment the methods presented in the book.

10 of 14 found the following review helpful:


Use it as a paper weight.  Nov 27, 2006 By Newton Ooi
As a scientist who went thru the rigors of getting a PhD in an American public university, I have noticed many subtle but inefficient practices. One of the worst goes as follows. A certain promising doctoral student starts on his (or her) research. His advisor hands him a classic text to read. Said text is nigh incomprehensible, but our prodigal student endeavors and comes to gradually understand the text and apply it to his studies. He graduates, begins his career and eventually gets that tenured position. Years later when he supervises his first graduate student, he imparts said text upon a new sufferer and the process begins anew. This book by W. A. Harrison is such a text. It is extremely hard to read, the words are small, there are few images or graphs or plots, and the examples are not geared for the computer age. But, because this book came out when solid state simulations began to spread in use and multiple free codes came about, it was read and used by many scientists and apprentices. Nowadays, there are dozens of much better books that are much easier to read and understand. Yet I still encounter this text being used. Why? Because many academics fought thru it, are proud of the feat, and somehow intend their trainees to do the same.

I read this book after reading thru over a dozen other books in the same subject, and found this to be the hardest and least understandable. This book is often considered the Bible of electronic structure simulations. This is a correct statement in the worst sense possible because the number of people who understand the Bible is much less than those who swear by it; i.e. very similar to this book. Overall, I do not recommend buying it or reading it. Its only redeeming quality is the exhaustive number of equations.


idiosyncratic  Feb 29, 2012 By Buddy Iodine
The idea behind this book is that a beginning graduate student can do approximate electronic structure calculations, solving nothing more than the quadratic equation, with the approximations provided. The approximate models are said to aid understanding and train intuition. It's a nice idea, but given the easy accessibility to electronic structure codes and powerful computers these days, it's antiquated: ones first approach would instead be to calculate! Worse, the pedagogical style in the book is such that it doesn't really train intuition either. I spent a lot of time trying to understand this book and I can't say that my effort was rewarded. Positive features: scope, historical interest, and low price from Dover.