Book excerpt: This book provides a concise presentation of the major techniques for determining analytic approximations to the solutions of planar oscillatory dynamic systems. These systems model many important phenomena in the sciences and engineering. In addition to the usual perturbation procedures, the book gives the details of when and how to correctly apply the method of harmonic balance for both first-order and higher-order calculations. This procedure is rarely given or discussed fully in standard textbooks. The basic philosophy of the book stresses how to initiate and complete the calculation of approximate solutions. This is done by a clear presentation of necessary background materials and by the working out of many examples.