Book excerpt: This first book to critically summarize the latest achievements and emerging applications within this interdisciplinary topic focuses on one of the most important types of detectors for elementary particles and photons: resistive plate chambers (RPCs). In the first part, the outstanding, international team of authors comprehensively describes and presents the features and design of single and double-layer RPCs before covering more advanced multi-layer RPCs. The second part then focuses on the application of RPCs in high energy physics, materials science, medicine and security. Throughout, the experienced authors adopt a didactic approach, with each subject presented in a simple way, increasing in complexity step by step.