Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the Josephson effect, a topic of never-ending interest in both fundamental and applied physics. In this volume, world-renowned experts present the unique aspects of the physics of the Josephson effect, resulting from the use of new materials, of hybrid architectures and from the possibility of realizing nanoscale junctions. These new experimental capabilities lead to systems where novel coherent phenomena and transport processes emerge. All this is of great relevance and impact, especially when combined with the didactic approach of the book. The reader will benefit from a general and modern view of coherent phenomena in weakly-coupled superconductors on a macroscopic scale. Topics that have been only recently discussed in specialized papers and in short reviews are described here for the first time and organized in a general framework. An important section of the book is also devoted to applications, with focus on long-term, future applications. In addition to a significant number of illustrations, the book includes numerous tables for comparative studies on technical aspects.