Mechanics of Materials

This book does teach you pretty much everything you would need to know. It is not however a good read. It is one of the blandest books I have ever read, but I will not hold that against it since it is after all a textbook. The only reason I purchased this book, is that class homework is from it. I do not like the way that the book presents topics as it seems kind of backwards to me. If you are looking to learn the topic, this book certainly can help you do that, but there may be better options.

I recieved the book quickly, and this product was in the condition described. Overall I had no negative issues with this purchase.

I bought this book as a supplementary reference for mechanics of materials, which I do at my job. The book is well written, with plenty of example problems sprinkled throughout. I also found this book to be very comprehensive. For example, I found material on the mechanics of shrink wrapping, which I don't see in many other books on strength of materials. The only thing I would fault is that some of the chapters are too long and would have been better from a pedogical standpoint if they'd been broken up into smaller chapters. In particular, Chapter 7 on beam stresses could have been divided into separate chapters concentrating on pure bending and transverse loading. That way, a discussion of pure bending leads naturally into transverse loading. Instead, these topics are sort of thrown together into one big chapter, overwhelming the student. But overall, it's an excellent volume. Given a choice, I'd recommend Beer and Johnston, but you won't go wrong with Riley et al. either.