The text focuses on fundamentals and how fundamentals can be applied to understand how the major inorganic materials are produced and the initial stages of their processing. Understanding of these fundamentals will equip students for engineering future processes for producing materials or for studying the processing of the many less common materials not examined in this text.

The text is intended for use in an undergraduate course at the junior or senior level, but will also serve as a useful introductory and reference work for graduate students and practicing scientists and engineers.