LECTURES OF SIDNEY COLEMAN ON QUANTUM FIELD THEORY: FOREWORD BY DAVID KAISER

Edit: Someone requested a picture of the hard copy - so I added it.Sidney Coleman was a theoretical physicist's physicist. This book is an edited transcription of his lectures at Harvard for the QFT course he taught for many years. The video lectures are available on the Harvard web site, but while the audio is fine, the video has degraded to the point where it is almost unwatchable. Hence the value of this book. Also note the book is 1100 pages long and includes far more material than was previously published as transcriptions of his lectures (which often included only the first semester). The editors have done a fantastic job in recreating the lectures. Several sample chapters are available on the publishers web site (and of course Amazon) for the book.I own over 10 QFT books (My favorite is Srednicki). This year I decided to try and finish most of them, and I was in a quandary of where to start. I thought of rereading the classic Bjorken & Drell books, but while they are great at Feynman diagram calculations, they have little on more modern topics including non-Abelian gauge theories. Then Coleman's book (which had been on preorder for quite a while) arrived and solved my dilemma. I am about a quarter of the way through the book, and the lectures are simply wonderful to read. The book is like the Feynman lectures on physics for QFT, not as formal as a textbook, but containing the insight of a genius, and still comprehensible to us mortals.Because these are transcriptions of actual lectures, all of the little details (which make QFT so difficult for many students) are often included in most of the calculations. I have found (at least so far) that this is one of the few QFT books that I can read without pen and paper nearby. And the editors have added footnotes adding explanations and references to other textbooks on particular topics such as Green functions and contour integrals. The book also contains 25 problem sets (each about 4 problems) with detailed solutions (see attached image).Although the lectures are dated at about 1975, they are quite modern (although certain material such as Helicity spinor formalism is not treated, and effective field theory is barely mentioned, and renormalization group treated in only one final chapter). I think because its a little older, certain material is treated in more detail than in the modern QFT books, simply because there is a little less to cover. The Coleman book also follows the strategy (used by Srednicki as well) of starting with scalar fields, then on to spinor fields, and finally spin 1 gauge fields. And Coleman also reviews the necessary group theory.So I highly recommend this book either as a starting book or a complement to one of the more modern QFT books (Srednicki, Peskin & Schroeder, Zee, Schwartz).

COLEMAN's video LECTURES are known to be the best oral vehicle available to learn QFT !The transcription/conversion of the Coleman lectures by his gifted physicist "alums" is simply SUPERB !The writing and publication of his lectures are a monumental undertaking.The undertaking is clearly a work of love and an homage to Professor Coleman.

This is, quite frankly, the ONLY book on QFT.Burn all the others as heretics.

Can not beat this book

Sidney Coleman understood quantum field theory thoroughly at depths probed by very few physicists. And like a magician, he brought new life to the subject.

It's a superposition of hardcover and paperback. Until you open the box and observe there's no way to know which version you will get. If someone posts a photo to prove the existence of an actual hard-cover version I'll happily remove my review. Otherwise I see no reason why my comment is not appropriate here.

Sidney Coleman was, as I understand, A. Zee's mentor, which gives me even more respect for Zee, if that is possible. Coleman's lectures are unparalleled, and presented in a unique style that exudes his mastery of the subject. This beautiful work is a must for anyone serious about QFT, even we mathematicians!