Professor Shankar’s book, “Fundamentals of Physics” is, in my opinion all that a serious student requires to learn the important facts and ideas of mechanics, relativity, and thermodynamics. Realistically, the knowledge presented in this ‘concise’ book is what a diligent student walks away with after pouring through those 8-10 pound tomes that attempt to teach everything of first year, first semester physics for the Sciences. Augmented by his Yale lectures and problems with solutions, one has all that is needed for a thorough understanding of the basic principles of physics. In fact, physics is not really ‘learned’ until the laws and principles are applied to real world problems of increasing orders of magnitude and complexity, such as problems that are encountered in a research lab. It is one thing to solve a cute little problem of trajectory of a bomb falling or a parachute dropping from a plane; it is entirely another matter to calculate the trajectory of an ion or electron in a plasma confined by a magnetic field, since the ions and electrons will follow helical paths around the magnetic field lines.<br><br>When I was an undergraduate physics major in the late 1960’s, it was drilled into us by our professors, backed up by none other than Resnick and Halliday’s first edition of “Physics” (now in its fifth edition, with Krane added as an author) that these first- exposure undergraduate tomes would serve us as a “reference” for the rest of our lives. Not true. Perhaps once or twice they did help me during my early graduate education. Certainly, they were of no help to me whatsoever during my latter graduate and post-graduate work;  hence my view of this idea of their serving as a ‘permanent reference.’ It is true they can be helpful when taking upper level undergraduate courses in, e.g., Classical Mechanics and Electrodynamics, but that is about all. And even here, you will find you will be looking for the core ideas – such as are expressed clearly, succinctly, and completely in Professor’s Shankar’s, “Fundamentals of Physics.” And when you are in the research lab, puzzling over a complex problem, you will reach for something like, “Theoretical Physics,” by Joos, or “Radio Frequency Capacitive Discharges,” by Razier et al; not your undergraduate copy of Resnick, Halliday, and Krane, or Serway, or Giancoli, or Tipler, and the like. If the ‘opposing views’ expressed here are put into perspective, then a thorough study of Shankar’s book, “Fundamentals of Physics”  (along with his second upcoming one on E&amp;M with, I suppose, Modern Physics and an emphasis on Quantum Mechanics) are all that are needed as ‘real’ references when you are buried deep in research, and you need to recall this or that after being away from it for a number of years: the massive tomes are therefore utterly redundant.<br><br>As a 65 year old research physicist who has just retired, I am confident of that which I have written here. Now, I am devoting myself to my own research and experimentation in QM, QED, and QFT; and you can be sure Professor Shankar’s ‘concise’ two books here on “Fundamentals of Physics” will be the first stop-off in my own review of that which is important to know (his “Basic Training in Mathematics” and “Quantum Mechanics,” are also up for a serious review).<br><br>In summary, a young student – or an older one for that matter – could not do better than availing him/her self of these two splendid works in physics. The old saying is so true: “With all thy getting, first get understanding.”