This is a translation of A.I. Lurie's classical Russian textbook on
analytical mechanics. It offers a consummate exposition of the subject
of analytical mechanics through a deep analysis of its most fundamental
concepts. The book has served as a desk text for at least two
generations of researchers working in those fields where the Soviet
Union accomplished the greatest technological breakthrough of the 20th
century - a race into space. Those and other related fields continue to
be intensively explored since then, and the book clearly demonstrates
how the fundamental concepts of mechanics work in the context of
up-to-date engineering problems.