This book provides a detailed history of theUnited States National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics(USNC/TAM) of the US National Academies, the relationship between the USNC/TAMand IUTAM, and a review of the many mechanicians who developed the field overtime. It emphasizes the birth and growth of USNC/TAM, the birth and growth ofthe larger International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM),and explores the work of mechanics from Aristotle to the present. Written bythe former Secretary of USNC/TAM, Dr. Carl T. Herakovich of the University ofVirginia, the book profiles luminaries of mechanics including Galileo, Newton,Bernoulli, Euler, Cauchy, Prandtl, Einstein, von Kármán, Timoshenko, and in so doingprovides insight into centuries of scientific and technologic advance.