Book excerpt: This book is intended for a course that combines machinery and power systems into one semester. It is designed to be flexible and to allow instructors to choose chapters a la carte, so the instructor controls the emphasis. The text gives students the information they need to become real-world engineers, focusing on principles and teaching how to use information as opposed to doing a lot of calculations that would rarely be done by a practising engineer. The author compresses the material by focusing on its essence, underlying principles. MATLAB is used throughout the book in examples and problems.