Kondepudi and Prigogine come close in writing such a book. It is very accessible, well written, and it tries very hard to present thermodynamics as one unified discipline.

Points are scored with the attention given to historical developments, the incorporation of non-equilibrium concepts right from the start (the 'unified' approach), the clear presentations of the various notions (some of which are conceptually quite difficult, such as the classical description of entropy), and the quality of the problems.

Weaknesses are the somewhat cheap looking lay-out, the absence of key ideas from statistical thermodynamics (which are really helpful in understanding non-equilibrium concepts, and are essential to anyone who needs to learn thermodynamics; this omission is unforgivable) and the poor editing job (many typos, sentences constructed in a weird way).

All in all, this is probably the first affordable introductory text of thermodynamics that incorporates non-equilibrium ideas from the very start, and it certainly does justice to what is known as 'classical' thermodynamics or 'non-equilibrium' thermodynamics. The lack of 'statistical' thermodynamics is a severe error of judgement by the authors; as a consequence, the book -good as it is- does NOT describe thermodynamics as a whole; students will still need to follow a separate course in statistical thermodynamics. Given the importance of the topic, the instructiveness of its reasoning and its power to make the various thermodynamic pieces fall together, the omission of 'statistical' thermodynamics is a mystery.

Other than that, the book is a delight. For the missing statistical info, I recommend the excellent book by Frederi

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Excellent  Jul 19, 2004 By Surviving Modern Scientist
This is an excellent book, simple, rational, with the relevant historical context...
I was teaching a thermodynamics course for biologists and was quite tired of the standard stuff when a collegue recommend this book to me, he had the impression that it was a good book and was about to review it for his own course (physics students).
We decidded to adopt the book for both courses (we use only the first part with is intended for this use).

The best book on thermodynamics I have seen so far.

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:


Textbook is distinguishable by a link between eq. and no-eq.  Feb 12, 2001 By Juan R. Gonzalez-Alvarez
Kondepudi and Prigogine's textbook is distinguishable by a link between the books of equilibrium non-statistical thermodynamics and the monographs in non-equilibrium non-statistical thermodynamics. A minor lack of generality on the development of the whole formal system is apparent, but an advantage in that the text is practical and complete. In my opinion, there is no clear logic connection between subjects in equilibrium and non- equilibrium. For example, the derivation of the Clausius' inequality from the entropic balance equation is lacking. The historic references and the portraits of the pioneers in the field of thermodynamics are remarkable. The chapter dedicated to the dissipative structures is basic, but this is compensated with a very good introduction to the linear and non-linear non-equilibrium regimes. The treatment of affinity is admirable, more so by the way it sticks out with the influence of the Brussels school! A noteworthy criticism is the confusion created by the inter-use of the terms "current density" and "flux" in the study of non-equilibrium processes. I like the statement of the third law. The footnote discussion of the local character of the balance equations with regards to Einstein's relativistic theory is also very interesting.

8 of 9 found the following review helpful:


One of the best thermodynamics textbooks...  Dec 15, 2000 By Yuri Kuzyk
Prigogine and Kondepudi have done an excellent job developing the basic concepts of thermodynamics through an overview of the historical developments - very postmodern for a science textbook! They present all relevant material to then develop non-equilibrium thermodynamics through the use of many examples.

I found their manner of developing the concepts and equations to be very clear and concise. The mathematics are well-developed although a thorough background in engineering calculus is required. In fact, for many of the classical equilibrium concepts they have the clearest development I have ever read; certainly the section on Maxwell's relations is far superior to my old book by Callen.

Many different applications including chemical and electro-optic, are developed for non-equilibrium methods. For all sections the authors have listed references and suggested readings to make it easy for further explorations.

I wished this textbook had been around when I went through engineering...

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:


Should be excellent for avoiding "equilibrium" tunnel vision  Apr 03, 2010 By Pdecordoba

A very good review of this book is available on line at the link given in the first comment, below.

As Prigogine explained in The End of Certainty, one of his driving interests in life was to understand nonequilibrium systems, in part because each of us IS such a system. That interest probably explains why (as the review mentioned above put it),

"One of the unusual features of this book is that it begins by explicitly discussing both nonuniform and nonequilibrium systems. While most of the traditional topics of a course in chemical thermodynamics are included in this book, these applications are treated in the context of a more general formalism that can be used to discuss both linear and nonlinear nonequilibrium systems."

I think this approach will help the student avoid getting locked into the mindset of "Thermo is only about equilibrium" that held back so many of my own generation. I wish this had been my textbook when I was in college. It's given me some ideas for how to handle some phenomena that I now investigate just for fun.

Rather than write more, I'll refer prospective customers to the on-line review.

See all 8 customer reviews on Amazon.com