I had the pleasure and the privilege of reading the original book, particularly
some of the important chapters of the book on Fracture Mechanics by Dr. Nestor
Perez. I find the book, in general, very well written for the academicians as well
as for the practitioners in the field of engineering fracture mechanics. The
language is simple, clear and to the point. Each chapter is developed in such a
way that the mathematical treatment supports the main physical mechanism of
fracture. The equations are arranged in an orderly fashion in harmony with the
descriptive concepts of a phenomenon that is highly complex, very nonlinear
and often unpredictable. The main objective of a mathematical analysis is to
explain and clarify a physical phenomenon, and definitely not to jeopardize it
by undue and unwanted complexity at the cost of brevity. If this is true for
a textbook or any treatise for that matter, Dr. Perez’s book has done the job
quite elegantly