The aim of this book is to discuss the present situation of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms involving higher order derivatives. The achievements of differential geometry in formulating a more modern and powerful treatment of these theories is described and an extensive review of the development of these theories in classical language is also given.

The differential geometric formulation of analytical mechanics not only offers a new insight into Mechanics, but also provides a more rigorous formulation of its physical content from a mathematical viewpoint.Topics covered in this volume include differential forms, the differential geometry of tangent and cotangent bundles, almost tangent geometry, symplectic and pre-symplectic Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, tensors and connections on manifolds, and geometrical aspects of variational and constraint theories.The book may be considered as a self-contained text and only presupposes that readers are acquainted with linear and multilinear algebra as well as advanced calculus.