The first edition of this book was prepared over the years 1966-70 when the subject of phase transitions was undergoing a complete overhaul. The concepts of scaling and universality had just taken root but the renormalization group approach, which converted these concepts into a calculational tool, was still obscure. Not surprisingly, my text of that time could not do justice to these emerging developments. Over the intervening years I have felt increasingly conscious of this rather serious deficiency in the text; so when the time came to prepare a new edition, my major effort went towards correcting that deficiency.
