I think a lot of avenues of core sciences need books like these that are deeper than popular science but are accessible to someone who is not doing it for a living.
It’s a compact book of essentials for mathematically minded people*. It’s not a shallower-than-textbooks accessible introduction one step up from pop science.
* If you only ever took some linear algebra and calculus for engineering students, this probably doesn’t describe you.
Yes, I definitely think it will be useful for mathematically minded people who don’t find the “slow and intuitive” approach helpful. However, I suspect the fact that it is posted to HN where most of the audience would be people who only took some math for engineering students and that “popular physics book” is even mentioned on the homepage (it clearly says “unlike”, but for most textbooks this comparison isn’t even needed) might give rise to the misconception that it’s between pop science and other textbooks in terms of depth, as the root of this thread seems to demonstrate.
- rigorous treatment of the material
- no bullshit fluff
- exercises that you can do to think about the material and test your comprehension (often 50-100% of the answers are available online)
- systematic treatment used to train real physicists
In my experience, it's all about the homework. The rest just supports that.