Book excerpt: As the availability of powerful computer resources has grown over the last three decades, the art of computation of electromagnetic (EM) problems has also grown - exponentially. Despite this dramatic growth, however, the EM community lacked a comprehensive text on the computational techniques used to solve EM problems. The first edition of Numerical Techniques in Electromagnetics filled that gap and became the reference of choice for thousands of engineers, researchers, and students. The Second Edition of this bestselling text reflects the continuing increase in awareness and use of numerical techniques and incorporates advances and refinements made in recent years. Most notable among these are the improvements made to the standard algorithm for the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and treatment of absorbing boundary conditions in FDTD, finite element, and transmission-line-matrix methods. The author also added a chapter on the method of lines. Numerical Techniques in Electromagnetics continues to teach readers how to pose, numerically analyze, and solve EM problems, give them the ability to expand their problem-solving skills using a variety of methods, and prepare them for research in electromagnetism. Now the Second Edition goes even further toward providing a comprehensive resource that addresses all of the most useful computation methods for EM problems.