Only elementary math skills are needed to follow this manual, which covers many machines and their components, including hydrostatics and hydraulics, internal combustion engines, trains, and more. 204 black-and-white illustrations.As a Mechanical Engineering student I found the book to be extremely useful. I was already familiar with most of the theories from Dynamics and Statics, but it was cool to see how non textbooks refer to certain things (IE rather than saying the pivot point they call it the fulcrum). While we generally go over gear theories and calculations in Dynamics, we certainly don't get into their classifications so that was another useful piece of knowledge that I picked up. The last two chapters were extremely knowledgeable, since neither was in any of my textbooks. The last two chapters covered power trains and the internal combustion engine and were surprisingly in depth. I would highly recommend this book for any Engineering student seeking to get an out of the textbook perspective on your Mechanics classes, or to pick up some information on the inner workings of the engine.