Courtney has put together a nice survey of the various fields of (classical) materials science, from basic elasticity up through the mechanisms of plasticity, fracture, and so on. He covers these topics for metals, polymers and composites, and ceramics. The captions on the figures are a beautiful, beautiful thing. You can easily gain a decent understanding/review of the material by just flipping through a chapter and reading the paragraph-long captions on each of the figures- in fact, that was how I studied for my exams.
The book very much lacks examples, with perhaps only two or three half-page examples per chapter. I think the end-of-chapter problems were just a quick afterthought after the text was written. I think there are only 10 figures "new" for this book; Courtney pulled figure after figure after figure from the literature and/or other mechanics of materials books. The vast majority of the derivations in the text skip steps- a lot of steps- which makes them hard to follow. Courtney tries to discuss a lot of topics, which is fine, but sacrifices the necessary depth so that readers may gain sufficient understanding of the material. Frankly, if you want to learn about dislocations, pick up Hull and Bacon's book Introduction to Dislocations, Fourth Edition or any of the other texts entirely on dislocations.
I can't really recommend this text. Broad-brush survey books certainly have their place and proper usage, but I think this book is really lacking on substance.
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