Extremely stimulating, uses Galileo to motivate Newton's laws instead of postulating them. Treatment of Bertrand's theorem is beautiful, but contains one error (took me 2 years before I realized where..). However, I know of only one physicist who successully worked out all the missing steps and taught from this book. I know mathematicians who have cursed it. I used/use it for inspiration. The treatment of Liouville's integrability theorem, I found too abstract, found the old version in Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics to be clearer (Arnol'd might laugh sarcastically at this claim!)--for an interesting variation, but more from the standpoint of continuous groups, see the treatment in ch. 16 of my Classical Mechanics (Cambridge, 1997). In my text I do not restrict the discussion of integrability/nonintegrability to Hamiltonian systems but include driven dissipative systems as well. Another strength of Arnol'd: his discussion of caustics, useful for the study of galaxy formation (as I later learned while doing work in cosmology). Also, I learned from Arnol'd that Poisson brackets are not restricted to canonical systems (see also my ch. 15). I guess that every researcher in nonlinear dynamics should study Arnol'd's books, he's the 'alte Hasse' in the field.

Arnold shines for clarity, completeness and rigour. But, at the same time, he requires a remarkable intellectual effort on the part of the reader (at least a physicist or an engineer). Some readers might see this as a book of math rather than physics, but that would not be fair: Arnold always stresses the geometrical meaning and the physical intuition of what he states or demonstrates. You can take full advantage from the effort of reading this book only if you master a wide range of mathematical topics: essentially differential geometry, ODEs and PDEs and some topology. That's not always true for engineer or physics students at the beginning graduate level. For that kind of readers, Goldstein is a much better fit. Arnold can (and maybe should) be read afterwards.
On the other hand, the exercises, although not very numberous, are very well conceived and help a lot to deepen the comprehension of the text. Also, the order of the topics is linear and very effective from a didactic point of view. The exposition is clear, concise and always goes straight to the point. Thanks to these features, it is one of the most effective books for self-teaching I ever happened to read.
From a physical point of view, the domain of applications is essentially limited to discrete systems. Furthermore, the electromagnetism and relativity are not even cited, although they can be viewed as the logical completion of classical mechanics (see, for example, Goldstein). But the extreme generality of the approach largely balance the more restricted physical domain. In my opinion, the best book you can read on the topics.

After reading Arnold, I know no other authors of classical mechanics.

Arnold Weinstein is one of our most gifted literary comparativists working in the academy today, and Nobody's Home is Weinstein at his absolute best. Here he weaves together a wide range of American literature (Hawthorne, Melville, Fitzgerald, Morrison, Delillo) by demonstrating that it is the uniquely American theme of self-determinism and self-making (and its sobering corollary of determinism and disillusionment), that inform all of these works. His ability to link these seemingly disparate texts in such convincing fashion is quite extraordinary (the web never falters), and allows Weinstein an entry way into readings that make these texts utterly relevant to our lives today, and that reawaken texts that have been relegated to dusty bookshelves, or that were thought to have been plumbed. Weinstein is not just for those intersted in American literary criticism. He uses the rich record of literature to explore human themes that are as metaphysical, psychological, and identity-probing as they are literary.

America's intellectual father is the Modern Enlightenement. From Descarte's turn inward to Kant's radical autonomy, the Enlightenement gave birth to our understanding of freedom. Here, the Western intellectual tradtion separated the self from Nature and God, from any determining context. Essentially, it was the isolated self which gave meaning to, instead of finding meaning in the world. There are some that claim, however, that a self requires and is a causal function of Larger contexts like Culture, Family, Tradition and Religion (to name a few). Thus, it is dangerous and misleading to separate a self from the very material it requires to live. On this reading, the expressions of self are necesserily embedded in a context which presupposes a social world and shared set of meanings - a set of meanings that cannot be created by an isolated, radically free ego. To the contrary, an ego is a function of this world and requires it as a context for expression. Without these objective situations which enframe self, freedom and speech, the self is emptied of necessary content and confronts [our modern illness of] loneliness and despair. At this juncture, one could, vis a vis existentialism, search out the subjective depths of human angst, or one could assume a number of ironic postures in hopes of illustrating the human struggle with, and possibilities for freedom and meaning in a meaninglessness age. NOBODY'S HOME, somehow, shows a unique strain of literature that does both. Read this book if you want to understand how to use your failed Enlightenment inheritence.

I am the son of MR.rivers this is a offical statement

"thank you for listing my book for selling"

thank you.