Book excerpt: This detailed, comprehensive book describes the fundamental properties of soft X-rays and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation and discusses their applications in a wide variety of fields, including EUV lithography for semiconductor chip manufacture and soft X-ray biomicroscopy. The author begins by presenting the relevant basic principles such as radiation and scattering, wave propagation, diffraction, and coherence. He then goes on to examine a broad range of phenomena and applications. The topics covered include spectromicroscopy, EUV astronomy, synchrotron radiation, and soft X-ray lasers. The author also provides a wealth of useful reference material such as electron binding energies, characteristic emission lines and photo-absorption cross-sections. The book will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in engineering, physics, chemistry, and the life sciences. It will also appeal to practising engineers involved in semiconductor fabrication and materials science.