Rating: 
Summary: YOU COME IN HERE WITH A SKULL FULL OF MUSH...
Review: "You come in here with a skull full of mush, but if you survive you'll leave thinking like a physicist." Yeah, right.Do yourself a favor and read Goldstein instead.Marion/Thornton have sacrificed readability on the alter of formalism. This book is like a fine wine which has gone stale. Still, it makes a useful paperweight. It also comes in handy if you need to re-line the bird cage.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly disgraceful! May be the worst in the physics canon.
Review: (Disclaimer: All my criticisms are directed against Stephen Thornton, who prepared this edition when Marion died. I haven't seriously examined the earlier editions.)Let it not be said that this book is utterly without virtue. It does have a good store of challenging, interesting problems. Also, the introductory chapter includes a unique (for this level) discussion of the Levi-Civita notation, which is great for managing complicated expressions in vector and tensor analysis (if you're currently taking junior or senior E&M, use this if your teacher asks you to verify all those crazy vector identities on the inside cover of your book!). But beyond this, I can see no redeeming virtues. In a genre which is littered with astoundingly bad books, this book is a standout, and is among the "hated classics" like Reif's statistical mechanics book or J.D. Jackson's E&M book. But even those books, which are admittedly overly-difficult and often obtuse, do contain a lot of quality thought and valuable knowledge. A good book, when re-read, will reveal greater and greater depths of insight and knowledge. But rereading this book only revealed greater levels of sloppy thought. Only the more elementary derivations are comprehensible; the rest are befuddling, and I found that I had to write my own derivations and look up alternatives because the examples were either unconvincing, incomprehensible, or seemed to be based on incorrect physical reasoning. Ironically, I found that this book improved my confidence in mechanics because I had to spend so much time trying to compensate for the enormous failings logic, calculation, and pedagogy. But I'd still give it zero stars if I could. This book is just plain bad (a judgement I very rarely make), and I am very curious as to whether the reviewers who defend the book really thought about its contents or tried to follow all of its logic step by step, as one should do during any serious examination of a science text. Now some reviewers had good teachers, in which case they probably paid more attention to their lecture notes than the book. An individual skilled with mathematical manipulation can do surprisingly difficult problems without thinking very much about the underlying physical concepts or looking at any part of a derivation other than the part in the box. Finally, a very bright person may simply think through matters for themselves during and after a class, not taking time to examine the book. So I am not insulting the readers who gave it good reviews; I'm sure they did well in class, since students who get good grades don't write vitriol-filled reviews about the required text on Amazon.com. But I know they didn't really read it carefully. Instructors often choose this book because they were taught from previous editions (which may be superior), and may be too lazy or recalcitrant to change their ways. Although I often got cross looks from my professors for complaining about it, they generally agreed with my criticisms when I pushed the issue. But I didn't need to convince them. I overheard one professor bashing Chapter 4 as "just hacked together at the last minute because the material is sexy and fashionable." And right he was, for that chapter contains the worst explanations of nonlinear dynamics concepts I have ever seen (even if you discount the wrongly-printed Poincare sections towards the end). This same teacher admitted that he had spend over twenty minutes trying to understand the explanation of a very simple formula (and he is a theoretician who knows far more math than the average physicist).
Another fellow I knew, a Ph.D who was teaching an advanced mechanics class at my school for the first time, and was asked to use Marion, rewrote just about every example and explanation in the book for his students because he found them incomprehensible or too obtuse for beginners. So don't feel bad if this book befuddled you. You're not alone, either among the great (Ph.D theoreticians and experimentalists) or the small (bile-spouting nobodies with undergraduate degree only). Finally, a bit of advice for students: If you were made to buy this book, I recommend that you go to your library and find books about classical mechanics. Pick up a book or two that doesn't have the name "Thornton" on the cover. Now, it may be too easy (French's "Newtonian Mechanics" is less mathematical, but I still recommend it) or too hard (Goldstein is for highly motivated and prepared undergrads only), but I can tell you in all confidence that the random mechanics book you pick out will be better than the one you have now.
Rating:
Summary: Classical Mechanics is a Foundation
Review: After using this book(or better trying to use this book) I've observed, after complementing the theory that is just trying to resemble Goldstein obviusly omiting most of the theory and proposing to fill those gaps with little examples.
Exercises are poorly described maybe asuming you memorize examples, very few derivations are included most is tenth grade algebra. If you are trying to learn classical mechanics try Goldstein or Landau
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Intro to Classical Concepts
Review: Although it is not as detailed and thorough as Goldstein, this text is a very good intro to classical concepts. With a good instructor, much can be learned from it. The text is a good reference source as well.
Rating:
Summary: A miserable textbook.
Review: Back when I was an undergraduate, we used this text for a year-long junior level course on classical mechanics. I will never, I mean NEVER, understand how this book became the standard undergraduate text. Perhaps it is okay as a reference, but for learning the material it is completely useless. The examples are mostly useless, the problems are poorly worded, and it often fails to explain concepts in any significant detail. I eventually gave up on it and started reading the IMHO excellent classical mechanics text by Arya, which covers mostly the same topics but with much more detailed explanations--something important for an undergraduate textbook. I ended up learning the material and doing fine in the course, but I can't thank Marion and Thornton for it. Indeed, all I can thank the authors for it making the course a "character building experience", viz., a horrible ordeal. Do yourself a favor and go elsewhere for an intro classical mechanics book if it is at all possible to avoid this one.
Rating: 
Summary: good as a second reference
Review: For an introductory classical mechanics book, Marion is definitely lacking. I have been using his book, though, as a second resource to Goldstein's Classical Dynamics, since his examples (particularly the Lagrange problems and small oscillation problems) are very helpful. I agree with other reviews in that he does not delve deeply enough, theoretically, into the heart of classical mechanics.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly disgraceful! May be the worst in the physics canon.
Review: i agree to a lesser or greater extent with many of the polar opinions expressed here. my professors, despite their continued use of the book, have a bit of distaste for it. they claim previous editions were better. i cannot attest to the quality of the earlier editions, but i can say that the current one is not a very good text. but i will concur with the others in that the book does a fantastic job of explaining lagrangian and hamiltonian dynamics. the downside is that this was the only portion i fully understood after leaving my mechanics class. a research seminar on gravitational lensing would give me a second swing at the central-force motion chapter, which i did, in all honesty, find easier to read the second time around. i believe a second look at many of the sections would prove to be very helpful to those that are troubled. one thing in M&T, however, is simply egregious: the problems are sloppy, poorly described, and overly complicated. if the goal is to achieve a better understanding of the material, these questions fail miserably. good exercises are lost amidst mathematics that are overly troublesome to really be useful. having a course that discusses mathematical methods in physics before diving into this book is a great idea. i used potter and goldberg's "mathematical methods" and found it to be a very useful text, both as a teaching device and as a reference. combined with marion's text, i feel that one could certainly wade through classical mechanics.
Rating: 
Summary: such a schism!
Review: i agree to a lesser or greater extent with many of the polar opinions expressed here. my professors, despite their continued use of the book, have a bit of distaste for it. they claim previous editions were better. i cannot attest to the quality of the earlier editions, but i can say that the current one is not a very good text. but i will concur with the others in that the book does a fantastic job of explaining lagrangian and hamiltonian dynamics. the downside is that this was the only portion i fully understood after leaving my mechanics class. a research seminar on gravitational lensing would give me a second swing at the central-force motion chapter, which i did, in all honesty, find easier to read the second time around. i believe a second look at many of the sections would prove to be very helpful to those that are troubled. one thing in M&T, however, is simply egregious: the problems are sloppy, poorly described, and overly complicated. if the goal is to achieve a better understanding of the material, these questions fail miserably. good exercises are lost amidst mathematics that are overly troublesome to really be useful. having a course that discusses mathematical methods in physics before diving into this book is a great idea. i used potter and goldberg's "mathematical methods" and found it to be a very useful text, both as a teaching device and as a reference. combined with marion's text, i feel that one could certainly wade through classical mechanics.
Rating:
Summary: Competent presentation of introductory dynamics
Review: I agree with the reviewer from Connecticut in his/her assessment of this text. Unless one is mathematically immature, in other words a high school student, the 'formalities' of Marion/thornton are of no consequence. The problems are soluble, and are given only after in-chapter exercises that will acquaint the reader with appropriate problem-solving techniques. Many of these techniques are not the most elegant, see for instance the chapter on gravitation and Gauss' law for this interaction, and at times the author(s) dwell in the realm of the mathematically turgid as one my professors once phrased it, but this is more than compensated by a very interesting presentation of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics. One really appreciates the power of these alternatives to Newtonian mechanics after working out the problems. Although goldstein is much deeper in this regard, it is recommended that you see it once at this level before moving on to that venerable text.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly constructed book.
Review: I am on the third copy of this book and, like the previous two, whole sections have become unattached. Never have I had a hardcover book fall apart on me before. Either the binding methodology is faulty or the binding is being done improperly. I feel certain that others are having the same problem. The whole printing should be recalled.
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