materials

This book makes a difficult subject even more difficult. While the definitions and general information are good enough, the derivations seem to be very complicated, esoteric, and confusing. This may be appropriate for graduate level (although many of these techniques are obsolete in view of FE analysis) but this book bills itself, and is used mainly for undergraduate deformable mechanics classes. There seem to be a number of mistakes in the book as well. Professors should probably not use this book for an undergraduate level course--find something newer. Undergrads will probably need to get some sort of supplementary outline material that will simplify things.

The good: This is a comprehensive book. The bad: It has tons of mistakes. There are typos galore. The most egregious one occurs in the chapter entitled "Yield and Fructure Criteria." That's right, "Fructure." Pray tell, what exactly is "Fructure"? That's what's printed in big letters. The proofreading is very, very, very sloppy. Maybe these mistakes are more a function of editing deadlines rather than with Popov himself, but that doesn't mean that this isn't a bad volume that you shouldn't waste your money on. I used this book as a text and was very disappointed. Save your money and buy Beer and Johnston or Craig instead. Or even Popov's earlier work, Mechanics of Materials, which I liked a lot. Engineering Mechanics of Solids is just horrible in its mistakes.

Very classic text in Mechanics of Materials and my favorite edition is the second edition of Mechanics of Materials, 1976 (My all time favorite mechanics book). I own all Popove's mechanics books (And some 30 books in mechanics of solids) and they are really top notch level in their field. Despite the typos that other people pointed out (Which is not Popov mistake), I think this is one of the best texts in mechanics of materials and well deserve to look at by all engineering students who are studying this course. No matter what book is your text, you need to look at this one.