One of the fundamental design requirements for load carrying things such as buildings, bridges, machines and cars etc. is to prevent them from failure. Therefore "fail or not fail?" is a most often asked question in a designer's mind. Written in a unique way by an author who has both teaching and engineering consulting experience, this book aims to provide a simple general reading material or a complementary book to text books for young students or engineers. Using plain language, the book introduces most of the failure modes encountered in engineering practice and the relevant theories used in design to avoid these failures. Contents 1.Introduction 2.Stress and Strength 3.Stiffness, Deformation and Strain 4.Stress-Strain Curves 5.Application Examples 6.Strain Energy 7.Stress Concentration 8.Fast Fractures and Toughness 9.Cyclic Loading and Fatigue 10.High Temperature Environment and Creep 11.Columns and Buckling 12.Closure Main features: *Written by an engineer for engineering students or young engineers *Presenting complex subjects in a simple and unique way using a different approach from most traditional textbooks *Relating subjects closely to daily experience - helping understanding *Thought provoking questions and examples *Highlighting relevant methodologies: prediction, modeling, simulation and design *Covering most commonly encountered failure modes in engineering practice *Building up understanding gradually from intuition -> education guess->theory->application *Keywords for searching the internet to expand knowledge *Can be used as a guideline for selecting the relevant courses to study *SI unit to build feeling of confidence of SI unit.