Book excerpt: Atomic spectroscopy is the key technology used in the characterisation of inorganic materials. It encompasses a wide variety of techniques and provides rapid, sensitive and selective determination of elemental composition. This volume provides an overview of the complete range of atomic spectroscopy techniques available to the elemental analyst. Each chapter covers the essential principles of a technique, the available instrumentation and a range of representative applications. This is a book for analytical chemists, environmental chemists, earth scientists, food scientists and petrochemists in the industrial and academic sectors.