Applied Mechanics: a Treatise for the Use of Students who have time to work Experimental, Numerical, and Graphic Exercises illustrating the Subject

Abstract

PROFESSOR PERRY'S position in the Department of Science and Art gives him so wide an influence on the teaching of applied mechanics throughout the country, that a book which expounds and exemplifies the method of teaching he approves will be received with keen interest. But the volume before us has no need of any adventitious claim on the attention of readers. Prof. Perry has the knack of throwing his personality into his books. You may not always agree with him: indeed, nothing would distress him more than to find you doing that; for what is the use of trailing a coat unless a gentleman will be so good as to tread on it? But, at any rate, you will not find him dull. He holds you alike by what he says and how he says it. You recognise in every chapter the fulness of his knowledge, the ripeness of his experience, the freshness of his methods, the individuality of his style. It is a style which some of us are too steeped in convention to enjoy without qualification. I must myself confess to a measure of distaste for the “Clarendons” which flash out every here and there over the printed page, not in headlines, but to emphasise words and phrases in the text. And the numerous “asides” about educational methods and other things are oddly placed in a treatise on applied mechanics. But the most critical reader will find his admiration compelled by the immense amount the book contains of excellent matter not found, or not readily found, elsewhere; and he will admit that the work is pre-eminently alive in every page, and that the author is speaking throughout with a real knowledge of real things.