Customer Reviews

Analytical Mechanics (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science)

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C'mon--$300? For that price I can take a decent French course! Surely someone out there is willing to produce an English translation at a realistic price.

Pencil and paper are needed to sketch out the diagramatic details as the author lays down his work; he does not use diagrams. I am enjoying this book, as it is putting many things into perspective. I wish modern authors would write this way---clear. I also purchased The Variational Principles of Mechanics by Cornelius Lanczos to help with Langrange's Equation.

Read the original if you possibly can. Volumes 1 and 2 of the 3rd edition (in French) are in print; their ISBNs are 1418168432 and 1418167908 respectively. They cost only $39.95 apiece (list prices).
As for the English translation: it received a favorable review by Massimo Galuzzi in Isis (vol. 89:1, 1998), but it is overpriced (as another reviewer has already pointed out), and it contains many misprints. For example: the word "nouvelle" is misspelled on the title page, and the tangent of a polar angle on page 34 is written as x/y, when it should be y/x. This is pretty sloppy proofreading for such an expensive book.