physics

I used this book in an introductory quantum class last semester, and found it to be a well-written, easy-to-read, and, perhaps most importantly, lively text. Griffiths deserves to be described by the old term for physicist: "natural philosopher." He makes sure to explain concepts using logical, physical arguments and reviews most of the relevant math needed to understand the physics. It's something of a letdown, then, that many of the problems are mere mathematical exercises in tedium. There are many good problems, however, and, on the whole, it's a great book, especially if you've seen quantum a little before, as I had.

This is the best first course quantum mechanics text book by far. I used it as a text in first semester QM. How do I know it is the best? During first semester qm I spent many hours in the school library reading qm books. The library had a large section of qm books. I used to take 10 to 20 books home at a time. I was always looking for better explanations of particular expositions, and I found that often one book gave the clearest exposition in a particular area. Also, Ifound it helpful to read how several books described, for example, solution to the step function and others. But David Griffiths book is the best written book of all those others I read.

The Griffiths book is easy to understand. That is what makes it a good book for the beginning student of qm. Let me give an example of what I am saying: Fourty five years ago, when I first studied calculus, there was only one text book. It was the then venerable Calculus and Analytic Geometry by George Thomas, Jr. This book was not easy to study. It is not a well written book compared to modern calculus text books. But now there are many good calculus text books. Now calculus is a fairly easy subject because the text books are well written. They are student friendly. I think that most qm books are like the Thomas book in that they are not student friendly, and the Griffiths book is the first student friendly qm book in my view.

The one criticism that students might have of the Griffiths books is that the problems are long and time consuming. This is true if you do not use Mathematica or some other math program. If you use Mathematica, the problems can be worked in minutes.

The Griffiths book uses wave mechanics notation throughout, which every physicist must learn. To learn the Dirac notation, the best book I found (and the most elegant qm book I found) is Quantum Mechanics, by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu, and Franck Laloe.

I have read the first 4 chapters of the 1st Ed, and carefully looked at the 2nd. The book is an introduction to wave mechanics, starting with the Schrodinger Eq on the first page! It feels like he doesn't begin at the begining. He should at least give brief comments on the development of quantum ideas (both wave and matrix) and JUSTIFY why the wave approach is more suited as an introduction. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
All these jumps add up: when you try to work the problems you are working with wavefunctions like you've known them all your life! One could find this and that, but I was never sure how the results could be used (in an experimental setting for example). What system does this wavefunction represent, or at least approximate, give the reader some motivation for working on a problem for almost an hour.
I would also say the book is dull, because the author explains every single math step he takes. Sometimes it is helpful, but most of the time it kills the thrill. In places where things are harder to explain in details this approach is abandoned; in chapter 3 you'll find plenty of math rushed. In the 2nd Ed. the author breaks some of the more basic part of Ch. 3 into an appendix, but doesn't really improve on the writing. Apperantly it is believed that students of physics have never heard of seperation of variables but are at home with complex vector spaces. This is an unjustifiable approach. I bet if you take an average linear algebra course in US, you won't encounter: complex vector spaces, properties of hermitian matricies, not too much on diagonaliztion and change of basis. The 2nd Ed. does add 3-4 more examples in each chapter; that should save some problem solving time. But I am afraid important things such as properties of the wavefunction are still left as excercises. I was generally bored and sometimes confused in my time with book. Due to lack of interesting physical (ideal or real) examples, I felt like I was collecting ideas rather than exploring them. Also since every (easy) step is shown, the chapters desperately need a good summary. I usually read the summary before the chapter itself to get motivation. I think things mentioned above should be improved on. Schuam's outline book won't help you much with problems in this book, that book solves problems of a more general nature.
A good alternative is: "Quantum mechanics: a modern introduction' by Das and Melissinos (1986, Gordon and Breach). It is full of great physical examples. If you don't want to spend to much time with details, a good book, unfortunately out-of-print, is David B. Beard "Quantum mechanics" (Allyn & Bacon, 1963). Which also contains many physical insights, but is less thorough; only manages to scrach the surface of most topics because it takes on a wide range of topics in just 300 pages.