An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory (Frontiers in Physics) First Edition Edition

This review applies only to the Kindle edition. I'd give the print edition 4.5 or 5 stars.

The equations on the Kindle edition are stored as fuzzy, low resolution bitmaps which don't scale properly. They're readable, but only just. The Kindle book is usable, but unpleasant to use.

Purchased the Kindle eTextbook. The contents of the book are excellent but there are problems with the format. I am using the Kindle for PC application. It gives tiny equations on my 11 inch Windows 10 2-in-1, which has 1920x1080 resolution. The size of the equations cannot be changed! Only the size of the text can be changed. However, the equations are okay on my 15 inch Windows 10 laptop which has 1366x768 resolution. Evidently, the equations are small graphic images rather than being in a mathematics markup language, so on a device with high pixel density, they appear tiny. It seems that the Digital Rights Management (DRM) license only allows four devices for this book, and that, if used, the Kindle Cloud reader counts as one of them. I have experienced problems with DRM when trying to use the Kindle Cloud reader, so I no longer use it and unregistered it as one of my devices. I have had problems with DRM requiring me to remove and re-download the book.

I give this book 5 stars only because it is the best book available if you want to study the real thing in QFT. It is so much more readable than its predecessors it's amazing. That being said you must be ready for this book by having studied quantum mechanics at the level of Sakurai and you probably need to frequently revisit it.

You must read this book with pencil and paper in hand to get anything out of it. Sometimes a line or two in Peskin is three or four pages of manipulation. You have to work it out to learn the math skills to absorb the material. QFT is not a spectator sport.

Zee's book is a good introduction, I wished I had read it first but for the real thing in QFT you will need this book.

This is the ideal book to use a basis for learning QFT. That isn't to say that it's the only book that you'll need or that it can replace a course on QFT, but the good thing about the book is that it shows you how to actually calculate things. So my way of using this book is to go try to do a calculation until I run into an idea that the book does not explain well. At this point, I turn to some other book for more details. Quite a few times, the other books are not necessarily books on QFT. Ideally you want to be in a short course on QFT that shows you what the ideas in QFT are so that you can go crazy, compute a scattering amplitude and learn the details of the tricks involved in the calculations from a text. Which brings me to the the topic of backup texts to help understand things that this text does not treat well. A great set of supplementary notes for understanding the ideas involved in QFT are David Tong's 'Lectures on Quantum Field Theory' ([...]) that are freely available on the net. Unfortunately, they don't go very far but another great set of notes are Michael Luke's version of Sidney Coleman's 'QFT Lecture Notes' ([...]) that are also freely available on the net. A good text for more basic QFT stuff is Franz Gross' 'Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Field Theory' (http://www.amazon.com/Relativistic-Quantum-Mechanics-science-paperback/dp/0471353868/). Gross' book assumes less knowledge on the part of the student and spends a lot of time on the EM field and the K-G and Dirac equations. A good supplement for (mostly) classical fields and gauges is 'Geometry, Particles and Fields' by Bjorn Felsager (http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Particles-Graduate-Contemporary-Physics/dp/0387982671/). At a much more elementary level is Davison Soper's 'Classical Field Theory' (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Field-Theory-Dover-Physics/dp/0486462609/). Special relativity and electrodynamics are covered well by Asim Barut's 'Electrodynamics and Classical Theory of Fields and Particles' (http://www.amazon.com/Electrodynamics-Classical-Theory-Fields-Particles/dp/0486640388/). A good book for a more laid back, overviewing, historical, pedagogical and well-written view of QFT is Steven Weinberg's 'The Quantum Theory of Fields: Vol I, II & III' (http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Theory-Fields-Foundations/dp/0521670535/), although, like most texts written by Weinberg, it's great and scholarly for people who already know some QFT but probably not a good text for someone seeing it all for the first time. Finally, mention must be made of the excellent, but sadly out of print, text on QED by Josef Jauch and Fred Rohrlich 'The Theory of Photons and Electrons' (http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Photons-Electrons-Relativistic-Mathematical/dp/3540072950/). Jauch and Rohrlich cover most of QED but none of the developments involving the Weak or Strong Force because they were not understood at all the time of the publication of the first edition of the book (1955). An update in 1976 included more QED but the death of Josef Jauch prevented it from becoming a full-blown QFT text.
In conclusion, you'll probably wannt Peskin and Schroeder as a sort of 'hammer, saw and screwdriver' text (a carpenter's basic tools are hammers, saws and screwdrivers) but you'll need to go grab other tools every now and then.

I guess this book is a good introduction. It contains a large amount of material, so it's a good reference, but it also doesn't assume you already know QFT and it's fairly rigorous, so it's a good introduction to students who are mature enough (whatever that means). But for some unknown reason, I always get lost reading it. I've studied QFT for about 3 years now and I still have a hard time reading this book. There is always a point where I get lost in the arguments and I think a lot of students who are starting out will have a very difficult time understanding the big picture if they only have this book. Maybe I'm just stupid, but I think there are better books out there. Srednicki is good because it's very clear and has short chapters (which is needed because in case you haven't heard, QFT is very hard). However, it has a weird structure where you do all of QFT for scalars, then spinors, then gauge fields, one after the other basically. I can understand this because the hardest thing to understand about QFT is WTF is going on. Zee is good at slowly explaining what is going on, but it lacks rigor. This is the worst review I've ever written. Basically, my advise is to get as many books as you can, study your face off, and then study some more. This is a hard subject and damn you mother nature for being the way u r.