REVIEWS
Excerpts from a review of the hard-cover first edition (Prentice Hall, 2001) by Prof. Eric A. Gislason in the Journal of Chemical Education, 78, 1186 (2001):
There are a number of things I like about this book. First, DeVoe takes great care in defining important thermodynamic words such as the thermodynamic state of a system. Similarly, he makes the distinction between process and path understandable, and this allows him to clearly define a reversible process as well as spontaneous and impossible processes. Section 4.1 then contains the sentence "An irreversible process is a spontaneous process whose reverse is an impossible process." This is obviously true, but I never would have thought of it without the author's help!
. . . The author is also very good at giving clear qualitative explanations of thermodynamic concepts. For example, I found his presentation of the second law using Carnot engines (Section 4.2) remarkably understandable. Most thermodynamics books do not present this material as clearly.
. . . Thermodynamics and Chemistry is well written and should be very useful to anyone interested in a rigorous development of thermodynamics. . . . Overall, this is an excellent textbook and belongs on the shelf of anyone who has a serious interest in chemical thermodynamics.
A 2020 review of the ebook second edition is at Open Textbook Library.