Fluid Mechanics for Engineers

To many people who teach elementary fluid mechanics to embryonic engineers, there falls regularly the responsibility of recommending a choice from a long list of textbooks all covering much the same ground.

For a lecturer without a book of his own, the choice may be quite difficult. A survey of the booksellers’ shelves shows the field to be indeed very full: there are about half a dozen possible winners and a much larger number of outsiders. Because some of these textbooks are very bad, and also because over all the correlation between value and price is not strong, a recommendation to students is an important undertaking. In the light of these rather stern generalities, it is pleasant to be able to write that Mr Barna’s book is on the whole a fairly satisfactory one: certainly this book is among the better of its kind, and can be regarded as a welcome addition to the list deserving consideration for teaching purposes.