Description: ClassicalMechanics is intended for students who have studied some mechanics in anintroductory physics course.With unusual clarity, the book covers most of the topics normally found in books at this level.
Brief description: John Taylor received his B.A. in math from Cambridge University in 1960 and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Berkeley in 1963. He is professor emeritus of physics and Presidential Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of some 40 articles in research journals; a book, Classical Mechanics; and three other textbooks, one of which, An Introduction to Error Analysis, has been translated into eleven foreign languages. He received a Distinguished Service Citation from the American Association of Physics Teachers and was named Colorado Professor of the Year in 1989. His television series Physics for Fun won an Emmy Award in 1990. He retired in 2005 and now lives in Washington, D.C.
Review Quotes: "A superb text. The clarity and readability of the book is so much better than anything else on the market, that I confidently predict this book will soon be the most widely used book on the subject in all American universities, and probably Canadian and European universities also. I judge it to be at least ten times better, maybe more, than the other two popular classical mechanics books on the market right now, the book by Fowles, which students say is too terse to understand, and the book by Marion and Thornton, which students say is so wordy and lengthy that they feel quickly lost." --American Journal of Physics
"I expect to use Professor Taylor's book at every opportunity. It is a fabulous example of clarity and precision - one of my very favorite physics texts." --Ben Newling, University of New Brunswick "I taught this same course several times using a different, but well known, textbook. In my estimation, Taylor's book is far superior. It is very sensibly organized, and can be read without hopping back and forth between sections or chapters. The introduction of variational principles and Lagrangian mechanics is seamless, and conducted fairly early on. The students grasped it much more quickly than I anticipated...Kudos to Taylor." --Michael Cavagnero, University of Kentucky "I will never sell this book. When I'm a strict, bitter old professor, it will be Classical Mechanics by John R. Taylor that I will remember as the book that renewed my love for such a beautiful subject." --Dmitry, Student of Mathematics and Physics at University of Waterloo "Taylor's book is unique among classical mechanics texts. It comprehensively covers the field at the Sophomore/Junior level. At the same time, it is immensely readable, a quality that comparable texts lack." --Jonathan Friedman, Amherst College "Taylor's Classical Mechanics is an excellent compromise between Marion, which contains too much material explained in too much detail for my tastes, and Fowles, which is much too terse. It is accessible for strong second-semester sophomores and is probably about right for first-semester juniors. The computer exercises in the end-of-chapter problems are particularly welcome." --Alma C. Zook, Pomona College "The book is excellent. The core of a truly superb mechanics course is covered in Taylor's text. I, personally, want this book now." --Robert Pompi, State University of New York, Binghamton