I have not read this entire book, but what I have read seems to be extremely well written. This book is quite commonly used to cover a typical Physics I, II, and III course. I highly recommend the extended edition because that will also cover Modern Physics as well. This is primarily written for Calculus based physics, but only cursory knowledge of the Calculus is required to reading, however, I maintain that Physics without Calculus is illusive at best. This book covers basic Newtonian Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Fluids, the shape of the atom, Special Relativity, and a few other treats. I do not have a preference for edition as I have only been exposed to two different editions.
Pages: 1,328
ISBN: Various Editions
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I actually used this book on my course in Electromagnetism and found it to be very thorough. Knowledge of Calculus III topics (Vector Analysis, double and triple integrals) are essential for even looking into this book. It also helps if you are familiar with differential forms and using the Del Operator and the Laplacian are very useful. Knowledge of other coordinate systems will make the problems far less intractable. I will admit that the problem exercises can get quite difficult, but this book has excellent development for understanding Electromagnetism. This is not for the light of heart, for Electromagnetism is a rather difficult subject and this is just the beginning of where this subject starts.
Pages: 588
ISBN: 0-471-81186-6
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Though the above book may be enough to get a fairly good knowledge of Electromagnetism, my professor also recommended this book. The advantage of using Griffiths is that it is very readable. In fact this book has made me want to purchase other books by Griffiths. The only failing this book has is in it's mathematical development. Wangsness develops the mathematical motivation in much greater detail and I truly wish Griffiths did as well, because this could be the definitive book on Electromagnetism. However, after developing detailed mathematical knowledge Griffiths book will become an outright joy to read. So I recommend this as a further supplement.
Pages: 576
ISBN: 0-13-805326-X
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"Classical Electrodynamics" by John David Jackson.
Continuing with the theme of Electromagnetism, I present an extremely deep text. This is not to be read until the previous two are even remotely understood and this text should further not be attempted until the student has learned about Quantum Mechanics. This text is very involved mathematically and may not be the best on the subject. I have not read it in full by any means, nor do I expect to anytime soon. But what I have read is that there is no equal text at this level.
Pages: 808
ISBN: 978-0-471-30932-1
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Pages: 638
ISBN: 0-201-65702-3
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Pages: 676
ISBN: 0-306-44790-8
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