I certainly don't want to discourage you from buying my
book. I do want to discourage you from buying it and returning
it. It's certainly not for everybody -- it's not even for
everybody who wants to read a systematic explanation of the
physics of billiards.
This is likely the first ever such systematic explanation.
The first version of anything is never the most elegant, and it
cannot be emphasized enough that the present work is a case in point.
Mathematical exposition has become quite a bit more polished in the
one hundred seventy or so years that have come between the present
and the first publication of Coriolis's work. This book is a difficult
read -- be ready for what somebody called "steaming heaps of equations." Here's a
sample page specially chosen to intimidate you.
The original book contained two other essays on mechanics. Those
essays are
NOT included in the present translation.
It was inevitable that I would add my some of my own mistakes to this work.
There is already an
errata list: so far it has only two errata. Peering into my crystal ball,
I see this situation changing in the near future.