Book excerpt: The development of humankind's ultimate energy source, nuclear fusion, has proceeded slowly but surely over the course of the last 60 years. This comprehensive book aims to outline a realistic, comprehensive, self-consistent, analytic theory of tearing mode dynamics in tokamak plasmas. It discusses a fluid theory of a highly magnetized plasma that treats the electrons and ions as independent fluids, and then proceeds to develop the theory of tearing modes, first approximating the geometry of a tokamak plasma as a periodic cylinder, but eventually considering the toroidal structure of real tokamak plasmas. This book also describes the stability of tearing modes, the saturation of such modes, and the evolution of their phase velocity due to interaction with other tearing modes, as well as the resistive vacuum vessel, and imperfections in the tokamak's magnetic field. This text will appeal to scientists and graduate students engaged in nuclear fusion research, and would make a useful reference for graduate plasma physics courses. Part of IOP Series in Plasma Physics.