Revised due to new developments in the polymer area. This book contains a broad, unified introduction to the subject matter that will be of immediate practical value plus a foundation for more advanced study. New features include a discussion of liquid-crystal polymers, the Flory-Huggins theory, group-transfer polymerization, a quantitative treatment of Ziegler-Natta polymerization with three new worked-out examples and much more. Also, end-of-chapter problems have been added along with practical illustrations of the material.