"Introductory Geotechnical Engineering is a comprehensive book intended to serve as a textbook for third year engineering students in most degree colleges across the country. This would also help students to tackle most questions in competitive examinations with geotechnical engineering as a subject. It would also help students aspiring for diploma level examinations in civil engineering. Thebook will also be useful to practising engineers as a ready reference on the subject. Attempts have been made to present the topics in simplified manner with large number of solved examples and unsolved problems for exercise. First chapter of the book provides a brief introduction on soil mechanics and need for study of the subject. Next eight chapters deal with the theory of soil mechanics dealing with the diverse soil properties. Chapter 10 discusses various types of foundations, where knowledge of soil mechanics will be applied for design and construction. The last chapter introduces the concept of geotechnical earthquake engineering, which is gaining importance as a part of disaster mitigation engineering, and has been introduced as a compulsory subject in civil engineering in many universities."