physics

This book was originally written in 1950. Inspite of its age, it is still a masterpiece in its kind. The author's approach is very attentive to developing the physical intuition, which makes the book an easy reading. The breadth of coverage is remarkable: along with relativity (and a bit of electromagnetism), it covers the mechanics of continua, too. The wide coverage more than pays back the effort of reading the relatively long text. Last but not least, the book is very well suited for self-study thanks to both its clarity and the many exercises provided (without solutions, unfortunately). Overall, it's still unsurpassed if you want to understand mechanics by yourself at the beginning graduate level. For the sake of this purpose, neither Landau not Arnold (two other masterpieces) come close. Rather, I recommend you to first read Goldstein and some time later read Arnold.

This is a good book for an advanced undergraduate to learn classical mechanics from, and also for the beginning graduate student who didn't learn about some of the somewhat more advanced topics in the subject, like the theory of canonical transformations and the Hamilton-Jacobi theory (I fell into the later camp, by the way). Yes, Landau is more concise and elegant, but for me at least it has served better as a reference now that I have mastered Goldstein (Landau is an excellent author, but I believe I am not alone in saying that it is very difficult to learn a subject for the first time from his books!)

Unlike other reviewers, I have no substantial complaints about the problems. Granted, there are some that are not very deep, but you can simply skip those if you like! And I find them nowhere near as difficult as Jackson problems!

By the way, I encourage you to read with a skeptical eye - I found several mistakes and typos in the book. Perhaps there is a catalog of these somewhere on the Addison-Wesley web site?

Oh, one final thing - I think it is out of line to compare this book with Abraham and Marsden - they have totally different objectives. Goldstein's aim is to develop in the student a solid grasp of the **basics** of mechanics - one must master Goldstein (or a book like it) before he or she understands the subject well enough to even decide whether Abraham and Marsden is a worthwhile endeavour!

基本上這本書並不好讀 有許多精緻的數學敘述 雖然不難 但要參透全義
也要花些時間 而最為詬病的大概是相對論那章的數學 對身為大學生的我還算艱深 以古典力學這樣的科目來說 這本算是最好的書了 而第三版不少同學(和我)覺得比第二板差 第二版的錯誤較少 恩 不管如何這真的是一本難得的好書
來自台灣(Taiwan)