Mechanics, Third Edition: Volume 1 (Course of Theoretical Physics),   ISBN:9780750628969

Customer Rating: 

I like to read this book before bed. That does NOT mean that it is boring! It's rather dense; you might spend 30 minutes reading one page. You'll have to think about every sentence in the book because he's explaining some important insight. You need to have a good background in calculus of variations to even begin to read the book. Could have done a better job at canonical transformations but overall far superior to other books on the subject. Definitely not for undergraduates.

Customer Rating: 

One of the most significant moments in my Physics education came during my sophomore year in college. I decided to pick up a copy of "Mechanics" by Landau and Lifshitz that was on reserve in the library for the mechanics class that I was taking. This is the first volume in the internationally renowned series of textbooks on theoretical Physics, the series that has a reputation for its sparse and difficult writing style, as well as the undoubted difficulty and brilliance of the material presented. This is probably the reason why until that point I didn't even bother looking at these books, but for whatever reason that fateful night I decided to take a look at this particular volume. To my surprise, the book was actually pretty readable and the first few chapters revealed an entirely new way of looking at Physics. Until that point I was used to thinking about Physics as a set of laws and equations, relatively succinct but otherwise somewhat arbitrary and ad-hoc. Landau and Lifshitz's book started from a very different point; it gave some deep underlying principles as a starting point behind the development of physical laws and equations. Based on that I had a new and deeper appreciation of my chosen field of study, and I gained a whole new way of looking at the physical reality.

Granted, the book is really not a walk in the park. Many later chapters can be rather technically demanding, and a prior course on theoretical mechanics at college level is probably the minimal level of preparation that can get a reader through the whole text. There aren't all that many examples that are thoroughly worked out, but all of the problems are given (rather concise) solutions - you still need to fill in some of the more important steps on your own. Mechanics is not an area of active modern research, so this is not necessarily a book that will help one with their scientific careers. However, it provides a solid grounding in some of the most basic physical concepts, and the skills and techniques acquired here can be very important in other areas of Physics. All said, this is a classic textbook that anyone who is serious about a career in Physics would be well advised to go through.

Customer Rating: 

A masterpiece of classical mechanics!
I strongly suggest using it as a supplement for your mechanics course.
A brief but really complete presentation of the subject that must be studied carefully and read many times.Really beautiful !

However 45$ is a RIDICULOUS price for this book!
It's about 170 pages and the quality of printing is not that good.
This book should not cost more than 25$, really. Amazon should reduce it's price or people will realized that photocopying it would produce a book with better (!!) quality and 1/3 of the price.

Customer Rating: 

This is a compact, comprehensive text on theoretical mechanics. One of the best books ever published on mechanics.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this volume to help see me through the last half of volume II of this series, and it did the job well.

This is the complete introduction to advance mechanics, the first of nine volumes and the perfect prerequisite and complement to the larger volume II, on the "Classical Theory of Fields." It is short, sweet and very understandable.

The introduction to tensors is the best available anywhere, economical and clear and notation that has a very light footprint.

Special attention is paid to the last section on canonical equations, although most of the formulations are greatly compacted, if not too abbreviated and require some unfurling to grasp all of their implicit details. Despite this, once understood, it is difficult to see how the notation could have been any more economical or explicit. Altogether, this is a valuable reference for anyone hoping to tackle the other nine volumes. Five Stars