Book excerpt: This book distils into a single coherent handbook all the essentials of process automation at a depth sufficient for most practical purposes. The handbook focuses on the knowledge needed to cope with the vast majority of process control and automation situations. In doing so, a number of sensible balances have been carefully struck between breadth and depth, theory and practice, classical and modern, technology and technique, information and understanding. A thorough grounding is provided for every topic. No other book covers the gap between the theory and practice of control systems so comprehensively and at a level suitable for practicing engineers.