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I've been working on some projects lately where it would be very handy to know more about thermodynamics than I do, but sadly I never had a chance to take a proper thermodynamics course in college. Unfortunately, right now I don't have the time to work through a 500-600 page undergraduate text on the subject. Can anyone recommend a book/online resource/PDF that perhaps gives a (calculus based) broad overview of classical thermodynamics, say in something less than 200 pages? Thanks!

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Enrico Fermi's book on thermodynamics is thin and excellent. It should be in every library and it has recently been published in Dover so it must be cheap. – drake Sep 13 '12 at 5:50
@drake that would be the sort of thing to post as an answer – David Zaslavsky♦ Sep 13 '12 at 6:40

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Thermodynamics by Enrico Fermi seems to be what you're looking for. I bought it for less than ten dollars. It's about a hundred and fifty pages and starts from the axioms. And it's very well written.

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I can recommend the lecture on statistical physics by Lennard Susskind. I learned a lot from them and they are available as videos online. For instance at this link or on youtube. You can even watch those in the evening after a busy day, since Lennard pretty much thinks for you (which you have to do youself when going through a book).

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Have a look at my paper ''Phenomenological thermodynamics'' http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/ms/phenTherm.pdf , which summarizes the core of thermodynamics in 18 pages, essentially starting from scratch. (It is also available as Chapter 7 of my online book http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0810.1019 , and can be read independent of the remainder of the book.)

Understanding this is enough to enable you to understand the articles in Wikipedia (start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Phases_of_matter) on states of matter, phase transitions, and other thermal phenomena.

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"Thermal Physics" by Finn is a small and excellent book.

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I always loved Callen's Thermodynamics. In 200-250 pages you get the whole structure of thermodynamics more clearly than anywhere else. And it is wonderfully written, a fun and easy read. When I was in college I essentially studied these pages in a long weekend. Of course back in those days I had the time to fully concentrate on a single thing.

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Callen is really nice. It is the book on equilibrium thermodynamics. – Arnold Neumaier Sep 16 '12 at 15:10

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