Book excerpt: Mössbauer Spectroscopy of Environmental Materials and their Industrial Utilization provides a description of the properties of materials formed on the earth's surface, their synthetic analogs where applicable, and the products of their modifications in the course of natural processes, such as weathering, or in industrial processing as reflected in their Mössbauer spectra. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which these processes can be observed and elucidated through the use of Mössbauer spectroscopy. The first chapter covers the basic theory of the Mössbauer effect and Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the nuts and bolts of experimental Mössbauer spectroscopy. The principles of these first three chapters, illustrated with many case studies, are applied to different areas of interest in Chapters 4 through 12. The book is directed to a broad audience ranging from graduate students in environmental sciences or chemical engineering with little or no expertise in Mössbauer spectroscopy to researchers from other disciplines who are familiar with this technique but wish to learn more about possible applications to environmental materials and issues.