This book by Aurèle Parriaux, Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, appeared in its first form in French in 2006. The following year the book received the Roberval Higher Educational Prize, an award that promotes the diffusion of scientific and technological knowledge in the French language. The success of the book was such that a second edition appeared last year, together with a substantial revised edition in English, published by CRC Press.

The structure of the book does not follow a dry descriptive approach. The development of chapters is greatly based on geological processes so that the geological rationale of fundamentals can be understood by the engineer. The text derives from the courses that Professor Parriaux gives to his students of civil engineering and environmental engineering. Its insights and understanding of geology is thus friendly for engineers because it uses easily comprehensible language. In addition, it refers to many case histories in the practice of engineering from around the world. At the same time, it remains an excellent treatise on the applied facets of geology that are presented in such a way as to be both instructive and educational for geology students too and of course as a reference textbook to practitioners of engineering geology, civil and environmental engineering.

This 570 page book contains numerous excellent illustrations, figures and sketches for the effective conception of the information and contains original photographs that exemplify the potency of observation, a prime tool in geological science. Most of the illustrations are in color.

The pedagogic value of the book is underlined by exercises throughout the chapters.

An accompanying DVD contains the solutions to problems and also animations that make the description of geology much more dynamic and alive.

I highly recommend the book as a resource for the basic background of geological knowledge necessary for the understanding of the behaviour of the ground in engineering practice, infrastructure development and environmental protection.