This book is a compilation of the review papers, expositions and some of the technical works of Leo Kadanoff, a theoretical physicist. The idea is to put together a group of not-too-technical writing in which he discusses some issues in condensed matter physics, hydrodynamics, applied mathematics and national policy. The first section contains review papers on hydrodynamics, condensed matter physics and field theory. Next, is a selection of papers on scaling and universality, particularly applied to phase changes. A change of pace is provided by a series of papers on the critical analysis of...

"World Scientific has made available a collection of Leo's reviews, essays columns and commentaries which is a feast in several senses: the strategy and tactics of science, the science itself, the history of several important developments in science, and as a bonus a beautifully illustrated collection of essays on computational science. The average reader may find this, the final section of the book, most interesting, but for me the account of his discovery of scaling, for which, inexplicably, he did not receive the Nobel prize, is most intriguing. Leo's combination of verve, frankness and...

"Leo Kadanoff has been a pioneer in the elucidations of cooperative phenomena, in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium systems. His insights are deep and he expresses them lucidly. This book is full of such goodies and is a pleasure to read and contemplate. Very highly recommended for both experts and novices". Joel L Lebowitz Rutgers University"Leo Kadanoff is one of the deep thinkers in statistical physics and that is apparent on almost every page of his "Statistical Physics: Statics, Dynamics, and Renormalization". This is a mixture of pedagogy, history (including reprints of classical or...

The material presented in this invaluable textbook has been tested in two courses. One of these is a graduate-level survey of statistical physics; the other, a rather personal perspective on critical behavior. Thus, this book defines a progression starting at the book-learning part of graduate education and ending in the midst of topics at the research level. To supplement the research-level side the book includes some research papers. Several of these are classics in the field, including a suite of six works on self-organized criticality and complexity, a pair on diffusion-limited...