As a scientist who went thru the rigors of getting a PhD in an American public university, I have noticed many subtle but inefficient practices. One of the worst goes as follows. A certain promising doctoral student starts on his (or her) research. His advisor hands him a classic text to read. Said text is nigh incomprehensible, but our prodigal student endeavors and comes to gradually understand the text and apply it to his studies. He graduates, begins his career and eventually gets that tenured position. Years later when he supervises his first graduate student, he imparts said text upon a new sufferer and the process begins anew. This book by W. A. Harrison is such a text. It is extremely hard to read, the words are small, there are few images or graphs or plots, and the examples are not geared for the computer age. But, because this book came out when solid state simulations began to spread in use and multiple free codes came about, it was read and used by many scientists and apprentices. Nowadays, there are dozens of much better books that are much easier to read and understand. Yet I still encounter this text being used. Why? Because many academics fought thru it, are proud of the feat, and somehow intend their trainees to do the same.
I read this book after reading thru over a dozen other books in the same subject, and found this to be the hardest and least understandable. This book is often considered the Bible of electronic structure simulations. This is a correct statement in the worst sense possible because the number of people who understand the Bible is much less than those who swear by it; i.e. very similar to this book. Overall, I do not recommend buying it or reading it. Its only redeeming quality is the exhaustive number of equations.