Charged spherical chickens in vacuum stuff…

General Advice
Electrodynamics is notoriously famous for being hard for beginners. It has earned that reputation because, most of the people are not comfortable with the math being used to understand the wonderful world of Maxwell’s equations (It is like attempting to do Newtonian mechanics without knowing the basic properties of vectors). In a typical first course, your goal will be to understand the meaning of Maxwell’s equations. Remember, these equations are motivated from empirical evidence. Why is $\nabla \cdot \vec{B} = 0$ ? Because, we have never found a magnetic monopole in nature. Why is $\nabla \cdot \vec{E}=\frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0}$ ? Because, electric charges/densities produce electric fields.

📍 REFERENCE BOOKS#

📖 Electrodynamics - David Tong 💫#

Introductory Ideal for Beginners State-of-the-art

I honestly think this book has kicked Griffth's from its pedestal as the goto reference for decades. Unlike it's classical mechanics counterpart, I truly believe that this book is penetrable for a beginner. It has a excellent appendix on all the math you need (which I also believe has been converted from his lecture notes on Vector Calculus) - So do give it a read before you tackle it (or give it a read in parallel). Supplementary material like 3Blue1Brown's animations - like [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB83DpBJQsE) will be of enormous benefit when trying to learn Electrodynamics.

TIP
The book has an excellent chapter on Classical Field Theory, which I do believe a lot of young physics students lack when they reach Quantum Field theory (Luckily, I didn’t belong to this set, I had/have a lot of other knowledge gaps that I am always filling up by solving problems, or going back to Tong’s book to concretize my basics :)

📖 Introduction to Electrodynamics- Griffiths ⭐#

Introductory Ideal for Beginners

The holy grail of all books for beginners in Electrodynamics. He is reading a story to you. First chapter is dedicated to the math required for electrodynamics and hence, is super duper important. Atleast for this chapter - Solve most of the problems to get a feeling of the math that is going to be used. The book is divided into two parts (in any logical course, you will do one part in a single semester course).

📖 Modern Electrodynamics - Andrew Zangwill#

Introductory

📍 ADVANCED BOOKS#

📖 Classical Electrodynamics - J.D. Jackson#

Expert Old-is-gold

Solutions - Website 1, Solutions -Website 2

Do I really need to introduce Jackson? For better or worse—and you’ll get strong opinions on both—my entire undergraduate electrodynamics education came from this book. Reflecting back, the intensity was almost absurd: wrestling with modified Jackson problems for second-semester assignments was a trial by fire. It wasn’t until semesters later, when I started tutoring electrodynamics, that I returned to the text and experienced hundreds of “Eureka” moments. Suddenly, the deep physical intuition behind so many concepts clicked into place.

Let me be clear: this book is not for the faint of heart. I’d only recommend it to those who have already mastered electrodynamics at the Tong/Griffiths level and are actively seeking a serious challenge.

📖 Electricity and Magnetism - Edward Purcell & David Morin#

Intermediate

A small fun fact about this book : Griffiths in the preface of his book writes, “Practically everything I know about electrodynamics - certainly about teaching electrodynamics - I owe to Edward Purcell”. On top of that, David Morin is the same guy whose lecture notes on Mechanics are practically used by every physics student at least once in their life.

Now, getting to the book, this book is so much more dense than Griffith’s textbook. Every mathematical step has been laid out in detail, so intricate detail at times that it might scare the reader. A lot of solved examples, and exercises with solutions at the back of the book. The amount of topics he covers is staggering. At least in Germany, not a student favorite unfortunately.

📖 Electrodynamics - Nolting#

Intermediate Unique

The book is advertised as for beginners, which is not wrong, but he really gives minimal physical intuition. Nevertheless, I have found myself going to this book to look for mathematical precision. It does and impecceable job while doing this. As an example, Griffiths (or any other book above for this matter) doesn’t really use the dirac delta function (distribution if some mathematician is reading this) $\delta(x-x_0)$ or the Heaviside theta function $\theta(r-r_0)$ while defining charge/current densities. The integral boundaries are set from the worded part of the problem. This is where the book shines, attention to mathematical detail so see how every step comes from the previous one. All exercises have solved solutions on the back, and the problems are excellent. The solutions are definitely not bad, but sometimes you will catch yourself going, “What? Why? How?”. I like to think that he did it on purpose, he gave the solutions but still makes you think on the steps.

📍 IDIOSYNCRATIC BOOKS#

📖 A Modern Introduction to Classical Electrodynamics - Maggoire#

Intermediate Unique State-of-the-art

I find most of Maggoire’s book a piece of art. They are not a standard run-of-the-mill textbooks that I would employ, but a classic aid to absolutely any course relevant to the subject. Again, this book has more of a theoretical nature, but has some excellent explanations. It prepares you for more advanced theories like Gauge Theories. Mathematical rigor is on point - most theorems backed by proofs and most problems with elaborate illustrative solutions.