While good wines and cheeses get better with age, good books require more human intervention. The second edition of Fundamentals of Quantum Entanglement makes an excellent book into an even better one.
The second edition has a similar structure to the first, with relatively short and dense but easy-to-follow chapters, most of them packed with advanced math, and all of them including multiple chapter references (many published by the book author). The writing is rather terse, often using passive voice, but somehow making it easy to digest the rather challenging topics one would expect in such a book.
As expected, there are historical perspectives, philosophical considerations and plenty of enticing topics to keep the reader interested. Although the chapter titles might seem repetitive (following the pattern of "Quantum entanglement and X"), the "X"s include fascinating topics like teleportation (not of objects, but of quantum states), quantum communications and, of course, quantum computing, making it worth the intellectual effort.
The second edition includes a new chapter on quantum entanglement via matrix notation, as well as many additional sections in the existing chapters. To help the reader digest the sometimes daunting math treatment, the book is illustrated with diagrams and charts (some in color, although not much benefitting from color) and mapped out around a fairly extensive index.
While the first edition was already an excellent reference for those interested in quantum entanglement, the second edition could equally well be used as a textbook, because each chapter includes a set of problems.
Review by Bogdan Hoanca, University of Alaska Anchorage, USA.
The opinions expressed in the book review section are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect those of OPN or its publisher, Optica (formerly OSA).