"Starting from basic principles, the book covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from Heisenberg, Schroedinger, second quantization, density matrix and path integral formulations of quantum mechanics, to applications that are (or will be) corner stones of present and future technologies. The emphasis is on spin waves, quantum information, recent tests of quantum physics and decoherence. The book provides a large amount of information without unbalancing the flow of the main ideas by laborious detail."
"By systematically covering both the Heisenberg and Schrödinger realizations, the book emphasizes the essential principles of quantum mechanics, which remain hidden within the usual derivations of the wave equation. Moreover, this presentation not only to covers the material which is traditionally presented in textbooks, but is also especially suitable for introducing the spin, i.e., the most important quantum observable. This emphasis on spin paves the way to a presentation of recent quantum-mechanical concepts such as entanglement and decoherence, and to recent applications including cryptography, teleportation and quantum computation."