Introduction to the Mechanics of Solids: In S.I.Units

I studied this book 34 years ago, and remember it as my favourite text, even though I never applied much of the material (I ended up going into environmental, not structural engineering.) Many engineering texts are a collection of theorems and facts put together in a more or less systematic fashion, but without a clear underlying story or thread. 34 years later I still remember the logic of this text and its power: balancing forces, understanding and respecting geometric constraints, and understanding and applying "constitutive relations", the relationships between forces and deformation. This book explained that logic and applied it consistently through a variety of interesting examples, including bone structure as well as I beams. In addition, it illustrated the art of approximation in engineering as an art...you try it, you see what it tells you, and if it doesn't make sense you try again. It tells a clear and memorable technical story. I won't be buying a copy from Amazon because I have still kept my original, but I believe the book is not only a technical classic, but a model for those of us who want to see how a textbook should be written.