Book excerpt: Lauded for its engaging, highly readable style, the best-selling first edition became the premier guide for nonengineers involved in water and wastewater treatment operations. Water and Wastewater Treatment: A Guide for the Nonengineering Professional, Second Edition continues to provide a simple, nonmathematical account of the unit processes used to treat both drinking water and wastewater. Completely revised and expanded, this second edition adds new material on technological advances, regulatory requirements, and other current issues facing the water and wastewater industries. Using step-by-step, jargon-free language, the authors present all the basic unit processes involved in drinking water and wastewater treatment. They describe each unit process, the function of the process in water or wastewater treatment, and the basic equipment used in each process. They also explain how the processes fit together within a drinking water or wastewater treatment system and discuss the fundamental concepts that constitute water and wastewater treatment processes as a whole. Avoiding mathematics, chemistry, and biology, the book includes numerous illustrations for easy comprehension of concepts and processes. It also contains chapter summaries and an extensive glossary of terms and abbreviations for quick reference.