Complete physics curriculum up to research-level, available here from a Nobelist: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html http://www.staff.scienc

Complete physics curriculum up to research-level, available here from a Nobelist: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html Roger Penrose's "Road to Reality" is great for an overview in one not-so-compact book. It's a bit hand-wavy, admittedly. The neophyte problem, and reason we have universities, is that "you don't know what you don't know." Penrose's book and t'Hooft's curriculum get you some part of the way to knowing what you need to know. One more option is Lev Landau's series. They're dense but fairly readable for graduate-level tracts.