Good books about waves and optics

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What’s a good textbook to learn about waves and oscillations?
Where is a good place to learn (classical) optics?

I'm looking for a good book about waves and optics, only basics things and a lot of tricks to solve exercises.

Answer 1

My favourite is Optics by Hecht and Zajac, though I'm not sure it's still in print. This book wasn't one of those suggested in the two duplicate questions.

Answer 2

There are two books by Eugene Hecht. The older one was edited in the Schaum collection, with the typical Schaum style: just the minimum theoretical notes, followed by tons of solved exercises. This one is probably what you are looking for.

Another question is the book referenced above, by Hecht and Zajac. Some people love it, some others find it useless. It has lots of written word and many pictures, and it is supposed to cover a huge range of subjects, but with little or no maths. It often tries to substitute a simple formula with several written non-mathematical paragraphs. I find the results not always enlightening.

Answer 3

Anything by Joseph W. Goodman is excellent. His book Introduction to Fourier Optics is what I consider the primary book on the subject, and I also own Statistical Optics, which I find to be a great reference for all sorts of phenomenon including partial coherence, speckle, and random media.. Note that Statistical Optics is not an introductory level text.