The famous mathematical physics textbook by Morse & Feshbach has finally been republished. I've long wanted to get my hands on a copy, but not at this price ($329 for the set, up from the original price of $250).
Not sure why the price is going up or what is he thinking, but I don't think his company will never be successful at this price. It's a shame.
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A quick check of other texts of similar vein shows prices in the same range.
Here's a $343.00 Sample: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=F81nur0Clh&isbn=9027728208&TXT=Y&itm=3
The used 1953 publication of the same book can be had for $100 on Amazon.
Yowza!!! Expensive stuff indeed!
Actually, there's a difference between the cited "Differential Geometrical Methods in Theoretical Physics" and the Morse & Feshbach text. The Differential Geometry book goes for $343 because it's a highly specialized cutting-edge book. The low readership means production costs are spread over a tiny print run. The price is therefore understandable.
Morse & Feshbach is standard graduate material. It has long been in the $100+ (per vol) range because it's been out of print for 20+ years. Supply and demand and all that sort of stuff. The benefit of a reprinting was supposed to be to increase supply and bring the price down. If the price of the reprint is still $250 then who gives a crap? What service is Feshbach Jr providing to the world?
From what I've read, the original text was never converted to PDF some electronic text equivilient.
Based off Mark Fleshbach comments on Amazon.com, the text may had to be restored from the printing film provided by McGraw-Hill.
This may help explain/justify the cost of the text.
There is *NOTHING* as good as Morse & Feshbach.
Boas is good, but as you say it's for a different audience than M&F.
I have a dozen+ mathematical physics texts. Not only does none of them even approach M&F, but there are topics where the 12 of them put together still do not reach the M&F standard.
One of my favorite books is the Courant & Hilbert 2-vol set, and it is very good in its own way, but it also does not replace Morse&Feshbach. If I were still in academia, I would drop $250 on these books without blinking, but I can't justify that kind of expense in my current life as an actuary.
I was really excited when I heard about this new release of M&F. It's just a shame that it didn't come along with a price drop.
But I will keep up my wishful thinking ... it's possible that now enough professors will start assigning these books as their text that it will increase the supply of used copies out there and bring the price down. Ah, hope springs eternal.
Thank you so much for posting your thoughts on here.
As I've made clear above, I am a big fan of the books. I can tell you that I would buy them if the price were lower. My pain threshold is $99 a volume. As far as the larger market, I am sure almost any physics graduate student would love to have this on his shelf, but not many of them can afford $250 on a TA or RA stipend.
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