As the author Hibbler does in all of his textbooks, there is little to no explanation surrounding the theory of the topics. 20% of the textbook is explanation of the topics, while the rest of the textbook contains examples and problems. Many of the problems are much more complex than the examples given, but if you have a good professor for the class, you should be alright. That being said, Hibbler does a good job of depicting all of the structural analysis methods in a very simple, easy-to-understand way. Therefore if you read this textbook, you will learn a lot, especially simple and short cut ways to solve structural analysis problems.