The most outstanding feature of this text is the author's unique and engaging application-oriented approach. Beginning each chapter with a real-life example, an experiment, or several interesting facts, Yip-Wah Chung wields an expertly crafted treatment with which he entertains and motivates as much as he informs and educates. He links the discipline to the life sciences and includes modern developments such as nanomaterials, polymers, and thin films while working systematically from atomic bonding and analytical methods to crystalline, electronic, mechanical, and magnetic properties as well as ceramics, corrosion, and phase diagrams. Woven among the interesting examples, stories, and Chinese folk tales is a rigorous yet approachable mathematical and theoretical treatise. This makes an effective tool for anyone needing a strong background in materials science for a broad variety of applications.