Book excerpt: Each of the chapters is based on a particular scientific paper that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and, while each story revolves around one or two scientists who were interviewed for this book, many, if not most, of the scientific accomplishments covered in the book are the result of collaborative efforts by several scientists and research groups, often from different organizations and from different countries. The book is different to other books in this field because it provides a novel human touch to nanotechnology research by not only covering a wide range of research topics but also the (often nameless) scientists behind this research. The book is a collection of Spotlight articles from the popular Nanowerk website and each article has been crafted with the author(s) of a scientific paper and signed off by them prior to being posted on Nanowerk.