"Comprehensive and introductory, this textbook covers all basic fundamental concepts of soil mechanics. It delineates how soil behaves, why it behaves that way, and the engineering significance of such behavior. The text clearly explains the various behaviors of soils based on mathematics, physics, and chemistry in simple but comprehensive ways. The authors include essential engineering equations to emphasize the importance of fundamentals, and 180 problems and solutions to aid with application. An instructor's guide, solutions manual, and PowerPoint presentation are available upon qualifying course adoption"-- "This book is not meant to cover full information and full spectrum of geotechnical engineering discipline, but rather intended to provide the simplest yet comprehensive first text book in soil mechanics for students and engineers in the field of civil engineering as well as architecture to understand what is soil, how it works, and why it works that way"--