In this second edition several new topics of technological interest have been added. These include: coupled mechanical and nonmechanical overall properties of heterogeneous piezoelectric materials, new upper and lower bounds for these coupled properties, a systematic comparison between the average-field theory and the results obtained using multi-scale perturbation theory, an account of the uniform-field theory, improveable bounds on overall moduli of heterogeneous materials which remain finite even when isolated cavities and rigid inclusions are present, and a brief account of a fundamental duality principle in anisotropic elasticity. In addition, better explanations of a number of topics are given, more recent references are added, the Subject Index has been expanded and printing and typographical errors have been corrected.
The material is organized into two parts preceded by a précis. Part 1 consists of four chapters which are organized into fourteen sections and four appendixes. It deals with materials with microdefects such as cavities, cracks, and inclusions, as well as with elastic composites. Part 2 consists of two chapters which are divided into seven sections. It provides an introduction to the theory of linear elasticity, added to make the book self-contained, since linear elasticity serves as the basis of the development of small-deformation micromechanics.

Part 2 mainly contains part of the lecture notes on elasticity which the first author wrote in the late 1960's. The material is mostly standard, given for background information.