Book excerpt: This book chronicles the proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Polymer Surface Modification: Relevance to Adhesion held Newark, New Jersey, May 24--26, 1999. Polymeric materials are intrinsically not very adhesionable and this necessitates their surface treatment to enhance their adhesion characteristics to other materials. Since the first symposium on this topic, held in 1993, there has been a tremendous R&D activity in devising novel or ameliorating the existing techniques for surface modification of polymers. This volume contains a total of 32 papers, which have been rigorously peer-reviewed and suitably revised before inclusion in this volume. The book is divided into three parts as follows. Part 1: Plasma Surface Modification Techniques; Part 2: Other/Miscellaneous Surface Modification Techniques; and Part 3: General Papers. The topics covered include: plasma surface modification of a variety of polymers using various plasma gases; atmospheric plasma system; surface functionalization; ultrahydrophobic polymeric surfaces; metallization of plasma treated polymers; surface modification of polymers via molecular design for adhesion promotion; wet chemical methods for polymer surface modification; laser surface modification of various polymers; UV/ozone treatment; surface and interface studies of treated polymer surfaces by an array of techniques; bioadhesion of polymeric biomaterials to tissue; polymer-fiber systems; and plasma deposited coatings.