ISBN0805385665

The back of the book says that it has been the premier optics text for a decade. I would disagree; suggesting that it has been so for well over 20 years. I used the first edition in 1981-2, when Hecht co-authored it with Zajac.

This fourth edition is significantly larger. Comparing the two editions is interesting. Certainly, many chapters are the same. After all, it is meant as a first book on optics for the physics major, and much of the theory and experiments have been unchanged for decades. It is also nice to see that Hecht has refrained from a gratuitous use of colour. Nowadays, many freshman texts in the sciences are chockablock with colour, both in the text and illustrations. But this is not a frosh text. A student who gets to the level of using this book is likely in her 3rd or 4th undergrad year, or perhaps even a grad student. Thus, she is probably already dedicated to majoring in physics, and does not need the frills of colour. Plus, to be sure, not using colour also saves the publisher a lot.

There is new material scattered throughout. Often reflecting experimental advances in recent years. Hence a quick description of terahertz rays [T-rays], and their use for nondestructive scanning of materials.

This is a fairly good textbook trapped in an inexcusably bad layout. I've worked my way through about half the textbook now and there are several sections which contain lots of helpful figures. However, there seems to have been almost no effort made to put the text on the same or facing page along with the figures, so you spend a lot of your time on these sections reading a paragraph, jumping ahead to find the figure, going back to read the next paragraph, again jumping ahead for that figure, and so on. It's bad enough when the figures are sparse, but when they are as dense as they are in some sections and as critical as they are to understanding the material, it's hard to stomach. As a result, I find that this book wastes a lot of my time. This is in the Third Edition, so you could hope things have changed, but I wouldn't bet a hundred bones on it.

Also, to reiterate what another reviewer said, there are subjects like Fourier Optics which are spread out throughout the book more than is necessary. This makes it a fairly poor reference, since you sometimes have to dig up separate chunks of material in a piecemeal fashion.

Still, for the level of the book, I am struggling to find something better. Born and Wolf is pretty good, but it's more of a graduate level text. Judging by the quality of the material available, textbook authorship must be harder than it seems.

As an introductory book teaching classical (and some modern) optics, this wonderful book is difficult to beat.

It prepares you remarkably well for any direction in optics you then want to set off in. The explanations are mostly crystal-clear, crafted with great care. Lots of words and diagrams, not too much math, but enough math to facilitate useful calculations.

An excellent under-graduate text, to my mind, the best available today.

An outstandingly good quality book, both in content and in the book itself. Very satisfied.

Of all the textbooks i have ever used at university (and as a fourth year student there have been quite a lot) this is simply the worst by far. Unlike the other physics textbooks i have used which were good at clarifying material, i found myself more confused after reading this book. Material i understood perfectly well at the lecture become suddenly incomprehendable when reading this awful book. Avoid it.
Having shelled out money at the beginning of the semester for this book, i ended up using other optics books from the library all semester. Do NOT buy this book.