Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering

Rating:
Summary: NOT A WELL WRITTEN TEXTBOOK!
Review: I am a graduate student studying geotechnical engineering and have used this book in my class. The problems at the end of each chapter are extremely difficult to do given the information in the textbook. I found myself constantly going to the library to attempt to get extra information which was almost always impossible to find. In fact, after spending hours on one problem, I talked to my professor about it and she spoke to the author of the book and he realized that the problem was not even possible to solve! I completely wasted hours of my time trying to solve it and it couldn't even be solved! Also, when a symbol for a constant is mentioned in the book, it is very difficult to go back and scan the pages to find out what the symbol stands for and what the correct equation is. Maybe the author can include a summary of symbols and what they stand for at the beginning of each chapter.

I would not recommend this textbook although I know that it is one of the few Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering textbooks out there.

Rating:
Summary: Best text in the field!
Review: One of the few books on geotechnical earthquake engineering. Treatment is extensive though it does not dwell in the specialist details for most topics. The chapter on "Ground response analysis" is excellent. I recently learnt of this professional software, "ProSHKAE" using the theory of this chapter to formulate its algorithm. I relied upon this book for a large part of my undergraduate research.

Rating:
Summary: good references
Review: This book is good for graduate level. It contains lots of principles and applications in this field. References listed in the book are very useful as a starting point in geotech research.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT book, really enjoyed it.
Review: This was a very clear and complete introduction to geotechnical earthquake engineering. It cleared up a lot of those "grey" areas and summarized current (say through '94) research.

Rating:
Summary: the best available
Review: Topics in geotechnical earthquake engineering is one of the
most active fields and always in rapid changing. Only with
several years off, the book by Professor Kramer is going to
be out-of-dated. Yet it is the BEST book available so far on
this topic.
I found the information in this book is useful for learning and
understanding, yet for the most excellent descriptions, we
have to refer directly to the scattered publications of
Berkeley School (i.e. Prof. H.Seed, R. Seed and J. Bray et al).

Rating:
Summary: The best introduction to geotechnical earthquake engineering
Review: Yes, this is an excellent overall introduction to the geotechnical aspects of earthquake engineering. We use it regularly in practice. The sections on seismic hazard analysis and seismic slope stability are particularly strong.

Rating:
Summary: The best introduction to geotechnical earthquake engineering
Review: Yes, this is an excellent overall introduction to the geotechnical aspects of earthquake engineering. We use it regularly in practice. The sections on seismic hazard analysis and seismic slope stability are particularly strong.