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Bruce Mahan’s University Chemistry (and his later, legendary Physical Chemistry text) occupies a strange space in academic lore. It isn't the glossy, 1,500-page behemoth that modern publishers sell for $300. Mahan’s book is lean, mean, and famously dense . It is the textbook that doesn’t hold your hand; it hands you a rope and expects you to climb the cliff of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and kinetics by yourself. You are getting the moment when physical chemistry