For surgeons, the several chapters in this book covering applications in orthopedics, plastic surgery, and cardiovascular surgery will serve as general summaries, and the history of implantation will be of interest, but these chapters are just trimmings. The main part of the book is devoted to the engineering and in-service problems of implants, as the following chapter headings show: "Structure of Materials," "Mechanical and Physical Properties of Materials," "Deterioration of Materials in Use," "Selection of Implant Materials," "Implant Production and Design," and so on. The intention of the authors was to start with basics: the lattices one finds in alloys, the structure of polymers, even the electron shells around atoms. Their idea was to build up from those bodies of information the principles governing very diverse disciplines: engineering design, corrosion, wear, and so forth. They had to gauge expertly how deeply they should go into the basic subjects and, in