Book excerpt: This newly published book is intended for dual use as a textbook for students in radiation shielding courses and a reference work for shielding practitioners. It emphasizes the principles behind techniques used in various aspects of shield analysis and presents these principles in many different contexts. This approach is intended to provide a strong base of understanding in order to facilitate use of the large shielding codes that have come to dominate shielding design and analysis. An assumption is made that the reader has an understanding of mathematics through basic calculus and vector analysis as well as a knowledge of the nuclear physics of radioactive decay. For most chapters, problem sets are provided.