[6][7] Advanced topics treated in the first edition include magnetohydrodynamics, plasma physics, the vector form of Kirchhoff's diffraction theory, special relativity, and radiation emitted by moving and colliding charges.

The two chapters on special relativity were rewritten entirely, with the basic results of relativistic kinematics being moved to the problems and replaced by a discussion on the electromagnetic Lagrangian.

Levitt, who worked at the Boeing Scientific Research Laboratory, commented that the first edition offers a lucid, comprehensive, and self-contained treatment of electromagnetism going from Coulomb's law of electrostatics all the way to self-fields and radiation reaction.

[12] Physicist Wayne Saslow from Texas A&M University observed that some important new applications were added to the text, such as fiber optics and dielectric waveguides, which are crucial in modern communications technology, and synchrotron light sources, responsible for advances in condensed-matter physics, and that fragments of the excised chapter on magnetohydrodynamics and plasma physics were scattered throughout the text.

However, while Goldstein's text has been facing competition from Vladimir Arnold's Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, Jackson remained unchallenged (as of 1999).

[13] Jagdish Mehra, a physicist and historian of science, wrote that Jackson's text is not as good as the book of the same name by Julian Schwinger et al.

He stated that four different instructors at his school had worked on an alternative to Jackson using lecture notes developed in roughly a decade with the goal of strengthening the student's understanding of electrodynamics rather than treating it as a topic of applied mathematics.

[6] Thomas Peters from the University of Zürich argued that while Jackson has historically been training students to perform difficult mathematical calculations, a task that is undoubtedly important, there is much more to electrodynamics than this.

[15] James Russ, an experimental high-energy physicist at the Carnegie Mellon University, was of the opinion that examples are challenging, and the fine points of physics are often left as exercises.

He added that Modern Electrodynamics by Andrew Zangwill is a better choice for beginning graduate students, but Jackson offers more comprehensive coverage and remains a fine reference.