Best of
Textbooks

1903

Selections from Homer’s Iliad


Homer - 1903
    Allen Rogers Benner presents selections from twelve books of the Iliad both in Greek and English. Short summaries between books bridge the narrative and aid the student in gaining a comprehensive view of the Iliad as a work of literature and art. Invaluable resources include an extensive section of notes on the text, a short Homeric grammar, and a vocabulary and Greek index.In a new foreword, Mark W. Edwards argues for the utility of Benner’s text while offering a useful summary of current scholarship on the historical sources of the epic, Greek oral tradition, and Homeric style and diction. Benner’s Iliad will join Barbour’s Herodotus and Garrison’s Catullus as indispensable volumes in classical culture and literature available from the University of Oklahoma Press.

Understanding Quantum Mechanics


Roland Omnès - 1903
    In an area that has provoked much philosophical debate, Omnes has achieved high recognition for his "Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (Princeton 1994), a book for specialists. Now the author has transformed his own theory into a short and readable text that enables beginning students and experienced physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers to form a comprehensive picture of the field while learning about the most recent advances.This new book presents a more streamlined version of the Copenhagen interpretation, showing its logical consistency and completeness. The problem of measurement is a major area of inquiry, with the author surveying its history from Planck to Heisenberg before describing the consistent-histories interpretation. He draws upon the most recent research on the decoherence effect (related to the modern resolution of the famous Schrodinger's cat problem) and an exact formulation of the correspondence between quantum and particle physics (implying a derivation of classical determinism from quantum probabilism).Interpretation is organized with the help of a universal and sound language using so-called consistent histories. As a language and a method, it can now be shown to be free of ambiguity and it makes interpretation much clearer and closer to common sense.