I am a graduate student at Columbia University working on Photonics. I am very happy to find the second edition on Amazon.
After reading it through, I have to say this book is PERFECT, totally deserve a five-star! The book itself is very well written, the explanations are clear and precise, which make this subject very easy to understand. It introduced the basic but adequate science background of each type of opto-devices, come with nice figures, great examples and intuitive analysis. There are also plenty of practice problems and additional topics allow the reader the expand and deepen the understanding of each subject. The book also includes lot of excellent historical photographs, which make it more enjoyable to read.
I happen to find out that lots of my colleagues from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, etc. used this book as their Photonics textbook as well. Now, it becomes one of the very important references on my book shelf and I am highly recommend this book to others who want to join the field of Photonics. After you read it, you won't regret to have it!
