Best Physics Books for Self-Study: 21 Picks From Beginner to Upper Level

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Last winter a former student from my first-year lab section emailed me. He is a software developer now, close to forty, and he wanted to learn physics properly, on his own, in the evenings. He had already bought the most famous physics books there are and stalled in the first volume. His question was simple: which book should he have started with, and what should come after it?

The best physics book for self-study is a calculus-based introductory textbook with worked examples and hundreds of problems, and the one I recommend first is Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick and Walker. If you want a full course with lectures attached, read R. Shankar’s Fundamentals of Physics I alongside his free Yale lectures. If you need the math first, start with Calculus Made Easy. If you want to read before you calculate, start with Six Easy Pieces or Thinking Physics. And if you want the shortest road to the ideas of modern theoretical physics, read Leonard Susskind’s The Theoretical Minimum.

I have a PhD in particle physics from Imperial College London. I taught first-year undergraduate labs for three years and spent five years at CERN calibrating particle detectors. The 21 books below are the reply I sent him, expanded: what to read first, which textbook to work through, how to go from introductory physics to the upper-level courses of a physics degree, and which free courses and textbooks to use with the books. Each one is in print on Amazon, with the edition to buy.

Quick picks

What self-study physics takes

The first thing I told my former student had nothing to do with books. Physics is learned by solving problems, not by reading about them. A university course works because it forces you to hand in problem sets every week. On your own, the book has to do that job, so the most important feature of a self-study physics book is not its prose. It is the quality of its worked examples, the number of its end-of-chapter problems and whether you can check your answers.

Three things decide which books on this list are right for you.

• Your math. Real physics is written in calculus. If you are comfortable with algebra and trigonometry but have never taken calculus, learn the basics of derivatives and integrals before or alongside your first textbook. If you have no algebra, start with the no-math books and an algebra course, and come back.
• Your goal. To understand the ideas, a popular book and The Theoretical Minimum may be enough. To be able to solve problems the way a physics graduate can, you need the textbook path: an introductory textbook, then the upper-level books.
• Your time. A first-year university physics course is about two semesters. Working five to eight hours a week, most adults take nine to twelve months to get through one intro textbook properly, problems included.

Most people who teach themselves physics follow the same order a physics degree does: introductory mechanics and electromagnetism with calculus, then a harder second pass at the same subjects, then the upper-level core of classical mechanics, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics and thermal physics. The sections below follow that order.

Best physics books to read before a textbook

These assume no calculus. They are the right start if it has been years since your last math class, or if you want to know what physics is about before you commit to a thousand-page textbook.

The math books you need

The single most common reason self-learners stall in physics is math, not physics. If a derivative or an integral makes you hesitate, fix that first. You need single-variable calculus for the intro textbooks and, later, vector calculus, linear algebra and differential equations for the upper-level books.

Best intro physics textbooks for self-study

This is the core of self-study physics. Pick one of these four and finish it, problems included. All of them cover the first year of a physics degree: mechanics, waves, heat, electricity and magnetism, optics and an introduction to relativity and quantum physics.

The Theoretical Minimum route

Leonard Susskind, a theoretical physicist at Stanford, taught a series of evening courses for adults in the community who wanted to learn real physics, with equations, without enrolling in a degree. The recordings are free online and the books are the courses written up. They teach the theoretical framework of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, special and general relativity with the minimum math needed to follow it. They suit engineers, programmers and others who remember some calculus and want the ideas more than the problem-solving drill.

Harder intro books for a second pass

These cover introductory mechanics and electromagnetism again, at the level of the honors first-year courses at MIT and Harvard. Read them after a standard textbook, when the problems at the end of Halliday’s chapters start to feel routine. They are where you learn to solve problems you have not seen before.

Upper-level physics books

These are the books of the second and third years of a physics degree. Together with the math in Boas, they are the core of what a physics graduate knows. Each one assumes an intro textbook behind you.

What Reddit recommends

“Which book should I start with?” is asked on r/AskPhysics and r/PhysicsStudents nearly every week. We read 84 of these threads, from 2013 to 2025, and counted how many named each book. Fifty-two of them were general “where do I start” threads; the rest asked about one book or subject.

Serway’s Physics for Scientists and Engineers came up in 13 threads too; it covers the same course as Halliday and Young and Freedman, and any one of the three will do. Among free resources, YouTube lectures were named in 32 threads, Khan Academy in 18 and MIT OpenCourseWare in 13, and Susan Rigetti’s free online physics roadmap was linked in 13.

The advice repeats as much as the books do:

• Learn the math first or alongside. Calculus, then linear algebra and differential equations, came up in more than half the threads.
• Pick one calculus-based textbook and do the problems. The top answer in one of the most upvoted threads says exactly that, and nothing else.
• Feynman is a supplement. One commenter called the lectures “great supplements. Terrible as primary textbooks”, and most agree.
• After the intro year, one book per subject. The standard list: Taylor, Morin or Kleppner for mechanics; Purcell or Griffiths for E&M; Griffiths for quantum; Schroeder for thermal physics.
• Do not start with Landau and Lifshitz or Jackson. They are graduate books. “Mistrust anyone telling you to begin with Jackson or Landau and Lifshitz,” as one reply put it.
• Buy older editions. The physics has not changed, and the price difference is large.

Several commenters also warn that pure self-study lets a misconception go uncorrected for months, and suggest a community college physics course or a study group for the first year. If one is available to you, it is good advice. If not, check your work against answer keys and post your attempts where someone can correct them.

Free physics courses and textbooks

You can learn a great deal of physics without paying for anything. These are the free resources I send self-learners to, and each one pairs with a book above.

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics, all three volumes, free to read online from Caltech.
• OpenStax University Physics, a free calculus-based intro textbook in three volumes from Rice University. It covers the same ground as Halliday, with answers to the odd-numbered problems. If money is tight, use it as your main textbook.
• Open Yale Courses, Physics 200 and 201, Shankar’s lectures, with problem sets and exams. They match his two books.
• MIT OpenCourseWare, the full MIT physics curriculum with lecture videos, problem sets and solutions: 8.01 (mechanics), 8.02 (electricity and magnetism), 8.03 (waves), 8.04 (quantum physics) and more.
• The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind’s Stanford lectures on video, the courses behind his books.
• Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler, the classic introduction to special relativity, free from Edwin Taylor’s website.
• Paul’s Online Math Notes, free notes and practice problems for calculus I to III and differential equations.

A free textbook does not make a paid one pointless. Many self-learners keep one book on paper for the main course and use the free ones for a second explanation of whatever is not clicking.

A self-study physics plan for the first two years

This is the plan I sent my former student, at five to eight hours a week. Faster readers with strong math will move quicker; few adults move slower and keep going, because physics rewards steady weekly work far more than occasional long weekends.

Do not try to finish every problem in every chapter. Do the worked examples yourself before reading the solution, then at least a third of the end-of-chapter problems, mixing easy and hard ones. If you cannot do any of the hard ones in a chapter, reread the chapter before moving on.

How to self-study physics from a book

When I taught first-year labs, the students who struggled were rarely short of intelligence. They read the chapter twice, highlighted it, and then could not start the first problem. Reading physics feels like learning it, and it is not. These habits close the gap.

• Cover the worked examples. Read the problem statement, cover the solution and try it yourself first. Then compare.
• Write every step. Draw the diagram, list what you know, write the physics principle you are using before any numbers. Most mistakes come from skipped steps.
• Check units and limits. Does your answer have the right units? Does it do the sensible thing when a mass goes to zero or an angle goes to 90 degrees? This catches most algebra errors without an answer key.
• Get stuck on purpose, but not for long. Twenty or thirty minutes stuck on a problem is useful. Two hours is not. Look at a hint or a solution, then redo the problem from a blank page the next day.
• Measure something. Physics is an experimental science, and a few cheap experiments make the equations real.
• Find people. r/PhysicsStudents, r/AskPhysics and the Physics Forums homework section will help with a problem if you show your attempt.

The first experiment I gave my former student needs no equipment: tie a key to a string, hang it from a cabinet knob, time ten swings with a phone and divide by ten. Then change the length of the string and do it again. The period of a pendulum depends on its length and on gravity but not on the mass of the key, and seeing the formula from your textbook match your kitchen is worth an evening of reading. A standard deviation calculator will tell you how much your timings scatter.

For a wider look at what physics covers before you choose a direction, see our list of physics topics and the complete list of forces in physics. For why it is worth the effort, read the benefits of studying physics. If you want lighter science reading for the evenings when problems are too much, our science books for non-scientists includes several physics titles.

FAQ

Sources

• Amazon product pages for each book, checked November 2026 (editions, page counts, publishers).
• 84 Reddit threads on self-studying physics in r/AskPhysics, r/PhysicsStudents and r/Physics, 2013 to 2025.
• Susan Rigetti, Physics, a self-study roadmap.
• Caltech, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, online edition.
• Open Yale Courses, PHYS 200: Fundamentals of Physics I, R. Shankar, 2006.
• OpenStax, University Physics Volume 1, Rice University.
• Leonard Susskind, The Theoretical Minimum lecture series, Stanford Continuing Studies.
• The Nobel Prize, The Nobel Prize in Physics 1952 (Bloch and Purcell).