Book excerpt: This book summarizes the state of the art in combustion synthesis of advanced materials. It is a first attempt to summarize and critically review in one monograph the mechanisms of combustion and product structure formation for a variety of systems, including nanosystems. The authors discuss a wide range of topics including phenomenology, theory, and modern in-situ experimental approaches to investigate the heterogeneous self-sustained reactions, as well as properties of the product synthesized, and methods for large-scale materials production.