Book excerpt: "The International Conference on Heterogeneous Material Mechanics (ICHMM) in Huangshan, China, June 3-8, 2008 follows the successful inaugural ICHMM held in ChongQing, China in June, 2004. The ICHMM series is the first international forum that focuses exclusively on various issues related to the behavior of heterogeneous materials in a broad sense. The object of the ICHMM is to present and publicize integrated scientific and engineering approaches to the measurement and modeling of phenomena at the interface of materials science, physics, chemistry, biology, and solid mechanics."--Preface, p. xxxix.