I'm a mech major. Not the best student in the class but I do alright. This book was definitely one of the easiest mech books to understand that I've come across in two years in college. The material over all was pretty basic and most of it was common sense to me though. It may also depend on how well your instructors can teach. Even if you don't have a good instruction the book uses simple enough terminology that you can understand the material with even the shakiest of engineering knowledge.

I read many chapters for a materials class. Being a math person, I think the author's did a great job presenting the mathematics of the theory
for ideas they were presenting. Just needed to be more solutions to problems. The Mohr's circle stuff was tough to understand because of the way it was presented. Our professor gave us homework assignments that examined stuff in Mohr's circle that showed us our misunderstandings about what happens when due to the alignment of the circle on the Y axis.

i really liked this book but not the teacher. the first few chapters of this book will be the hardest as there is a lot of variable that will need to be known. the book will start to focus on one aspect of MOM after the 4 or 5 chapters. the class may seem hard at first but will get a lot easier to understand towards the end. also if you do not understand the material by the end of the course i would recommend dropping out of civil or mech engineering as the stuff covered in this class will follow you for the rest of your engineering career. it will be covered in some way or another in most of the upper level undergrad courses especially Mohr's circle.

I ordered Mechanics of Materials [Hardcover] by Ferdinand Beer, Jr., E. Russell Johnston, John DeWolf, David Mazurek to revisit my training. Lost all my college texts years ago in a fire and this is one of the texts I read for knowledge enhancement. I like the approach and delivery of information in this format and I felt buying a used book is worth the price to have a good book available to study as needed. I really like it. Good condition when received, no marking or signs of abuse. Good purchase.

Flawless condition. Brings back a lot of long nights and problem solving before Machine Design--my personal favorite along with Kinematics in Mechanical Engineering undergrad days.

I would recommend this seller every time.

I've had to use this guy's books in three different classes, statics, dynamics, and well strengths of materials. Statics and Dynamics, those books well to put it bluntly.... were the biggest wastes of money and piece of s*** books I have in my arsenal, I literally could only learn from the instructor because it used trig to approach every problem as opposed to applying moments or cross products, just terrible... but maybe beer isn't that bad, he had a coauthor and he just let the other guy write it... atleast that's what I'd like to believe because the style is this book is much different. I was actually dreading this book when I saw who wrote it.

BACK TO THE POINT

I have actually read this book almost to completion, done countless hours of extra problems, and I think its a pretty damn good book. For those who moaned about how the explanations are long and tedious... welcome to engineering, you need to be tedious to be good at it, those who gave it 1 star for the complexity obviously are probably in business school. While the explanations seem convoluted in the beginning, there is a method to the madness. When you try to solve the problem first you probably just reference lecture notes first and then look back at the book for the equation, "plug and chug" well they sure as hell don't make any sense if you don't understand the purpose of the nomenclature. If you read each chapter in the sections where the equations are listed then follow an example problem, repeating this method... you can easily solve 70- 80 percent of the problems alone, you still need a prof to help; the reason being is this isn't just a class that relies on physics, but its more of logic based than math intensive subject.

The double whammy here is if you got a C in statics, if you read this book and googled how to do cross products, you could get an A if you retook the class.

Also a note.... this is a book for you to keep for a lifetime.... something you could ( I kid of course) pass on to your kids...so get the hardcover, its a classic, and its presented in a manner that if you sit down, read, and put in effort, it doesn't matter how gripping the subject is, if you appreciate the field then you will pass your class. I still reference this book for quick review or eqns even though my Shingley's Mech Design book makes it obsolete as a reference book, this thing is slim as hell compared to that encyclopedia.

FYI A GREAT AND POWERFUL SUPPLEMENT REGARDLESS OF THE BOOK YOU CHOOSE "STRUCTURES FREE" YOUTUBE IT, I ALWAYS USED IT WHENEVER MY PROF WASN'T AVAILABLE GUARENTEED 2ND PROFESSIONAL HELP AND NO WHITE BOARD INVOLVED AT ALL, VERY CLEAN AND IS RUN BY A PE Engineer.

Great engineering book that does a decent job explaining the material. It probably helps that my professor was good too, but the book made a fair contribution.

fine book