Book excerpt: Over the last decades, the study of surfactants (detergents, for example) has been profoundly changed by ideas and techniques from physics, chemistry, and materials science. Among these are: self assembly; critical phenomena, scaling, and renormalization; high-resolution scattering, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. This book represents the first systematic account of these new developments, providing both a general introduction to the subject as well as a review of recent developments. The book will be a very useful tool for the biophysist, biochemist or physical chemist working in the field of surfactants.