Customer Reviews

The Science Of Mechanics - A Critical And Historical Account Of Its Development

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Five stars for the content, three stars for this particular edition...

As far as this particular edition by Merchant Books of the famous Mach's "The Science of Mechanics" goes, the only excuse for the *very low* typographical quality is the low price (< $30). I always wanted to own a copy of this book, because, I believe, it is first book where the now famous "Mach's principle" (the debates among scientists have been ongoing for almost a century now !) has been stated. It is also famous for being a major influence to the young Albert Einstein in formulating the basic principles of his theory of general relativity. The price of the other editions seemed to be too steep for me, so, when this one came out, I instantly purchased it. Well, the major downside of the book is that the most of the formulas are printed terribly (for instance, most of the horizontal bars in formulas like A/B are missing, and they are also missing in most of the square root symbols (so they look more like the letter "V"). Fortunately, it requires only a couple of hours with a pencil and ruler in hand to correct all of these, as they all are self evident. The overall look of the text is like that of a photocopy of a photocopy of the original typographic text, which doesn't always please the eye. On the other hand it's <$30 vs. >$50, so it up to you to decide which edition to buy (and the $54 book is not ideal either)...