Book excerpt: While maintaining the lucidity of the first edition, Discrete Chaos, Second Edition: With Applications in Science and Engineering now includes many recent results on global stability, bifurcation, chaos, and fractals. The first five chapters provide the most comprehensive material on discrete dynamical systems, including trace-determinant stability, bifurcation analysis, and the detailed analysis of the center manifold theory. This edition also covers L-systems and the periodic structure of the bulbs in the Mandelbrot set as well as new applications in biology, chemistry, and physics. The principal improvements to this book are the additions of PHASER software on an accompanying CD-ROM and the MapleTM and Mathematica® code available for download online. Incorporating numerous new topics and technology not found in similar texts, Discrete Chaos, Second Edition presents a thorough, up-to-date treatment of the theory and applications of discrete dynamical systems.