ISBN0521831431

Top quality and well revised.
To emit my opinion I will have to complete the readings, but before that I am studying Quantum mechanics and Relativity

I still think advanced physics needs advanced mathematics to explain and explore. With limited depth of mathematics in this book, even though lots of ideas can be expressed, the process is tedious. This introductory book can satisfy my curiosity but not enough to envision the potential study advancement.

In spite of being published only two years ago, this book does not make any mention of Professor Susskind's Landscape theory, the single most important advancement in string theory since anomaly cancellation was discovered. The book does a disservice to the students it is intended for, letting them think they understand string theory while depriving them of key mathematical and physical concepts, such as the Lanscape or Calabi Yau manifolds.

Until chapter 10, the book is a pleasure to read. It is very systematic, everything is explained in great detail, and the different concepts are very clear and well exposed. The author succeeds in turning a rather obscure scientific topic into an exciting adventure. If I should judge the book only for this first part, I would give it 5 stars. In fact the book is misleading since when you start reading, you get the illusion string theory can be made accessible even for beginners with an average background.

However, this illusion is in vain since the panorama changes dramatically in chapter 10, where the author enters directly into quantum field theory, without any further preparation. An this is the real problem, because the author who developed from the ground up the classical approach to strings mechanics, takes for granted the reader is highly knowledged in quantum mechanics. In spite of his efforts to introduce the subject in successive approximations, all is in vain because the subject is too intricate. The book is not any more systematic for readers lacking adequate quantum theory background.

Certainly this is not a book for beginners. The book requires previous deep understanding of quantum mechanics. Beginners can still learn some interesting concepts from the first part of the book, but a complete reading would require deep study of less advanced quantum mechanics bibliography. That said, I must also point out if the level of the book is maintained in its second part, it may become a top ten for more advanced readers.

For any advanced undergraduate student in physics who is interested in string theory, this book is ideal. It starts off very easily, reviewing concepts of free point particle actions in special relativity and then gradually introduces classical strings, which are then quantised in the light-cone gauge. It doesn' get too technical, but it provides one with a good foundation in string theory's concepts. The topics are discussed very clearly, both in words and in formulae. At the end of the book, black holes are discussed very briefly (in connection with the Hagedoorn temperature) in an easy way, covariant quantisation (as an "improvement" on the light-cone gauge, which does not preserve Lorentz invariance all the way through), and D-branes.
This book is intended for advanced undergraduates, but for those who find beginning graduate courses in string theory too complicated at the outset, buy this one, read it and you'll probably understand more of the classics by Polchinski or Green/Schwarz/Witten. Those who have a solid knowledge of QFT might go passed this book, but it might be a good back-up for what more standard textbooks might call "trivial calculations".