Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. called it a "excellent introductory textbook" in his 1999 obituary for Purcell. Roy Schwitters writes in a Physics Today review of Andrew Zangwill's Electrodynamics that he advises undergraduates to pick up the third edition of this book. Jermey N. A. Mathews listed it as one of the five books that stood out in Physics Today in 2013, acknowledging that there were issues with the previous writings, however, the publication noted that "clearly, Purcell's E&M matures slowly."