Book excerpt: One of the key aspects of this volume is to cut across the traditional taxonomy of disciplines in the study of alloys. Hence there has been a deliberate attempt to integrate the different approaches taken towards alloys as a class of materials in different fields, ranging from geology to metallurgical engineering. The emphasis of this book is to highlight commonalities between different fields with respect to how alloys are studied. The topics in this book fall into several themes, which suggest a number of different classification schemes. We have chosen a scheme that classifies the papers in the volume into the categories Microstructural Considerations, Ordering, Kinetics and Diffusion, Magnetic Considerations and Elastic Considerations. The book has juxtaposed apparently disparate approaches to similar physical processes, in the hope of revealing a more dynamic character of the processes under consideration. This monograph will invigorate new kinds of discussion and reveal challenges and new avenues to the description and prediction of properties of materials in the solid state and the conditions that produce them.