CEE Professor Markus J. Buehler’s new book, titled “Atomistic Modeling of Materials Failure” (Springer 2008), was published in July. Intended as a reference for engineers, materials scientists and researchers in academia and industry, the book provides an introduction and an overview into the field of atomistic-based computational solid mechanics. Atomistic studies have helped Buehler and others develop new theories and insight into how cracks occur in brittle materials and how nanomaterials deform. “The main question we are concerned with is how materials fail under extreme conditions, and how the microscopic or macroscopic failure processes are related to atomistic details,” Buehler wrote in the book’s introduction. He describes how researchers can use new nanotechnology methods to create structures at the scale of single atoms to study a material’s failure.