D. Sarid's book tackles the most recent investigations on this subject. It is divided into three sections. The first one discusses levers as well as the noise induced by detection systems and it includes three chapters. In the first chapter, the author deals with the mechanical properties of the cantilever such as their spring constant in terms of Young modulus and geometry. The second chapter describes resonance enhancement when a vibrating lever is close to the sample. In this case, the force derivative gives rise to a new effective spring constant which affects the resonance frequency of the cantilever. The third chapter presents the noises induced by the lever, the force sensing tip and the deflection probe system. These noise considerations are also evoked in the following chapters mainly because they limit the resolution of the Scanning Force Microscope.The second section accurately describes the various existing Scanning Force Microscopes. This part comprises seven chapters presenting each a new lever-deflection method: tunneling, capacitance, homodyne, heterodyne, laser-diode feedback, polarization and optical deflection. Except for chapter 4 (which is more complete), the structure always remains the same. After a brief introduction, the author presents the theory, the noise aspect along with the performance of the scanning force microscope.The last three chapters, included in the third section, are more theoretical in outlook and deal with the theory, operating principle and performance of three scanning tunneling microscopes: electric field (chap. 11), magnetic force (chap. 12) and atomic force microscope (chap. 13). As the chapters 11 and 12 comprise basic concepts, examples, operating principle, noise aspect, applications and performance of electric force and magnetic force microscopy, the last chapter details microscopic and macroscopic interactions between the tip atoms and the surface of a sample. The discussion on AFM is then followed by a brief comparison of atomic, electrostatic and magnetostatic interactions follows.More generally, each application is followed by numerous experimental examples and gives a sufficient number of references providing the interested reader with a better insight into these new technologies.

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