mechanical

Although this text leaves out some topics that could be covered, this was a very easy-to-follow book, and it's appropriate for beginning engineers. (Not for advanced civil/mechanical engineers). It's very possible to use the book alone to get a good introduction to statics. There are many problems, and every other problem has the solution in the back of the book for practice. Although I did find some misprints occasionally, there were not enough to be a major problem.

I used this book for my Statics class and it has been one the best books I have read in college. Bedford & Fowler were able to make the subject easy to understand for any student without any immediate need for a calculus background. The book teaches you all the fundamentals of Statics in a simple way and goes into a good variety of problems for the user to solve at the end of each section. My only complaint would probably lie in the Moment of Inertia chapter. It gave good examples on how to find moment of inertia but failed to tell you its use. I would still recommend this book as a class textbook.

What I as a student found lacking in this book: 1.) It has many problems, which is a good thing, but this fact is negated by its lack of a publically available solutions manual and numerous and obvious misprints. 2.) Many of the examples gloss over important points to note and I found many vague and cursory. The instructor I had used more detailed material from other textbooks. Many examples also appeared to be used as a substitute for generalized text explainations and diagrams. It also seemed rather vague on the more theroetical aspects of the material. Considering all the other Statics textbooks out there, chances would favor some of them being a lot better than this one. And taking into account the price, I would consider this book a total waste of resources. If you're a mechanical engineering or aerospace student, you'll probably need a better introduction than this if you hope to survive the more advanced courses.