Analytical Mechanics

The spine is broken and the pages along the broken edge of the spine are on the verge of falling out. I order a "good" version, would definitely classify this as poor. The book looks nice from the outside but structurally it is not there.

This seller is an honest person. I would buy from them again with no worries. I misunderstood the product I was ordering and he promptly returned my money.

This is a very good undergrad. book on mechanics. Pretty standard in its coverage: newton's laws, oscillating systems, rigid bodies, lagrangian dynamics. The problems are interesting and doable. The notation remains reasonable at this level (better than marion). The section on rigid body motion is better than most books although the section on lagrangian dynamics is less than average (relative to marion, which is great on this LD). There is a good deal of sample problems provided, which is always helpful. Be prepared to solve ODEs, expand functions and work in various coordinate systems. I would put this book in the 80th percentile of the ten or so books that I have studied on this topic.

This is an extraordinarily well written Mechanics book. I think that a first year college student may run into some difficulties with this, simply because he may not have yet acquired the mathematical sophistication to truly appreciate the elegance of the presentation. I do believe though that by the 3rd or 4th year of college, this should be a fairly easy read. I last studied college level physics about 17 years ago, and frankly regret not having access to a book like this at that point. This book has just the right size (less than 1/3rd the length of Taylor), doesn't go into unnecessary details that detract from the matter at hand, and from a mathematical point of view is just brilliant. For somebody seeking to self teach himself basic mechanics, this would be a god send. There are a very large number of problems, and for those who want even more problems, schaums problem compilations should be enough. The level of calculus required is elementary and the author does provide quick intro to tools that are needed, for example working definitions of curl etc. This book is really accessible to even a Ist year college student, with some minimal background preparation in calculus. Of course, if you don't know the derivative of a polynomial, this book may not be for you :)A solid book for the truly interested.

Having read the previous reviews of this book, I was surprised by the range of opinions and ratings. I personally think it is one of the best book on mechanics I have seen. In university (30 years ago) I used Marion, 2nd edition, and found it abstract and frustrating at times, with not enough examples. Over the years I have accumulated many more mechanics books to try and better understand the advanced concepts, none of which I found wholly satisfactory. What I like about this book is the wealth of worked examples (I am amazed by those that say there are not enough examples), which allow you to really understand the concepts, and the new topics like Chaos theory, which many mechanics books do not cover. Also, I like the MathCad examples, since I am a fanatical MathCad user. I agree that the problems are challenging, but that is what problems are supposed to be! A solution manual would be nice. After studying a book like this, you can finally approach a book like Goldstein!

This is an excellent text. Much, much better than Marion and Thornton. It's not so advanced that you can't cover most of the material in one semester. The explanations are very clear and the layout is neat and conducive to learning. We used Marion and Thornton for class and I intensely disliked it. This is much better written and very well organised. I used it to study for the GRE. This is *the* undergraduate mechanic text!