Electricity and Magnetism (book)

Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally published by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' "Introduction to Electrodynamics", the book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by an National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. The 1965 edition, now freely available due to a condition of the federal grant, was originally published as a volume of the "Berkeley Physics Course". A revised and updated version of the book was published posthumously by David J. Morin and Cambridge University Press in 2013, and is known colloquially as Purcell and Morin. It was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. in 1999 that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Background.
The Berkley Series was influenced by MIT’s Physical Science Study Committee that was formed shortly before Sputnik was launched in 1956. The satellite could be seen from rooftops at MIT with times published in the local Boston newspapers. The space race affair is said to have caused a shake-up in the US scientific establishment and it led to new approaches to science education in the US.
Reception.
The book has received many reviews and recommendations since its initial publication in 1965. In his obituary for Purcell, Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. wrote in 1999 that it is an "excellent introductory textbook" with many foreign translations and was widely adopted. In a 2013 review of Andrew Zangwill's "Electrodynamics" in "Physics Today", Roy Schwitters states that he regularly encourages undergraduates to acquire the third edition of this book, along with John David Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics", before they are needed by later courses. The book was named one of five books that stood out in 2013 by Jermey N. A. Mathews in "Physics Today". Mathews praises the book for not deviating too far from Purcell's original and remarks that "[c]learly, Purcell's E&M matures slowly, and has taken on a life of its own; I won't be surprised to see the fourth edition appear another two decades from now." Purcell's work is also praised in the 2018 third edition of the book "Conquering the Physics GRE", where it is said to be "an extremely elegant introduction emphasizing physical concepts rather than mathematical formalism". The book also recommends "Introduction to Electrodynamics" by David J. Griffiths.
The first edition of the book was reviewed by Benjamin F. Bayman in 1966, who praises the book as a "beautiful book on electricity and magnetism", saying that he read the book with "great pleasure and profit". Bayman disputes the readability of the book for college sophomores, but goes on to praise the book's treatment of the subject as "very careful, very physical, and for the most part very clear" and that "in a few guiding sentences, he points the student towards the heart of the matter". Bayman singles out the last two chapters over electric and magnetic fields in matter as especially good.
In a 1998 review of the second edition, the reviewer admits to using the first edition the previous year in an accelerated course for engineers and physics majors and states it was "the best introductory textbook I have seen", stating it "has not aged". The reviewer notes that the main problem with the book is the restrictions around the Berkeley Physics Series and it lacks references to wave phenomena, issues that were fixed in the new edition according to the review, the "result is spectacular". He concludes by stating he "strongly" recommended the book.
A 2012 review of a 2011 Cambridge University Press reprint of the 1988 second edition acknowledged that the book's foremost criticism its lack of solutions to the problems given at the end of each chapter. The reviewer states that this problem was exacerbated by not including many calculation examples throughout the text. The book's use of cgs units rather than SI units was also mentioned as problematic. The review continues by saying "[d]espite the criticism, this text is very beautifully written and gives a well-structured and clear insight into the topic" and that it has "become some sort of standard" and "can be recommended to any student" for use in an introductory course of electromagnetism.
There were several reviews of the 2013 edition, with Morin as co-author, as well. One review opens by saying the book is "a welcome and significantly improved re-edition of what is arguably one of the finest undergraduate introductory textbooks on the subject". The reviewer praised the book's problem sets and stated that the "strongest aspect of the book" is its treatment of magnetism as a relativistic phenomenon. Another reviewer deemed it "an excellent updated introduction to this classic 50 year old text". A third review of the book called it a "welcome update to the original".