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Book Review: Principles of Structures

Ariel Hanaor states that this book was born out of his teaching, as a structural engineer, of "Theory of Structures" to first year architectural students and the need to explain sophisticated concepts in a clear way without recourse to jargon or complex mathematics. As a fellow engineer who is confronted each year with the same challenge, I both sympathise with him and welcome this book as an excellent first year handbook. It is aimed at those students who require a good basic qualitative understanding of structures and their behaviour, without needing to make detailed quantitative calculations. The book is divided into two main sections, basic structural concepts and structural systems. Throughout, the concise text IS splendidly complemented by explanatory sketches hand drawn by Bernardo Katz and a helpful referencing system that makes it easy to find related topics. Highlighting of keywords where they are defined also allows those definitions to be located without difficulty. In the first section the initial chapter introduces the design process and a methodology for design from brief to inception. This is followed by chapters on structure, forces and equilibrium, computational examples for the determination of shear and bending moment diagrams and forces in trusses. Forcedisplacement characteristics of structures and materials properties are also considered. Finally, some simple design examples (in the sense of engineering