This book is a concise, yet comprehensive modern introduction to soil science and describes the development of soils, their characteristics and their material composition as well as their functions in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Soil functions include the delivery of goods and services for the human society, such as food, clean water, and the maintenance of biodiversity. The book is profusely illustrated with many coloured figures and tables to accompany the text and ease its understanding. Particularly the chapter on soil classification, based on the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB), features numerous colour pictures of typical soil profiles to facilitate understanding the characteristics of particular soil types. Chapters on soil protection and remediation and soil monitoring and the history of soil sciences conclude the book together with a very comprehensive alphabetical index, allowing for a quick and easy orientation about the most important terms in soil sciences. The book addresses all those, who want to orient themselves about soils, their functions, their importance in terrestrial and aquatic environments and their contribution to the actual and future development of the human society, such as teachers, practitioners and students in the fields of agriculture, forestry, gardening, terrestrial and aquatic ecology and environmental engineering, and of course, beginning students of soil science. “Essentials of Soil Science” is an updated English edition of the highly valued German textbook „Bodenkunde in Stichworten” (now in its 7th edition), which was conceived in 1969 as a standard text in soil science for universities, high schools and all kinds of learned institutions related to soil science and its applications, including practitioners in agriculture, forestry, landscape planning and architecture and users of soil in engineering and other areas. For classroom use, Borntraeger (http://www.borntraeger-cramer.de/9783443010904) offers classroom sets of 10 and 20 copies which you may order through your bookstore or directly online by following the respective link.