In this text, the first monograph to cover essentially all aspects of lightning, every effort has been made to present a balanced review of the present knowledge of lightning physics and lightning effects. The end-of-chapter reference and bibliography lists (a total of over 6000 entries) are essentially complete on most topics up to spring 2002. The Appendix contains a list of other books on lightning and related topics. Each of the authors has contributed to all chapters of the book; however the primary authorship by chapter is as follows. Chapters 1–9 and 12 were written by Rakov; Chapters 10, 13–15, and 18–20 by Uman; and Chapters 11, 16, and 17 were jointly written. General coordination of the work resulting in this book was conducted by Rakov.

Portions of the content of this book have been used for several years as the textbook for a one-semester senior- and graduate-level course on lightning at the University of Florida. The suggested content for a similar one-semester course would include Sections 1.2, 2.5, 2.9, subsections 3.2.1–3.2.7, Chapter 4, Section 7.2, and Chapters 12 and 17. The prerequisite for such a course would be an undergraduate course in electromagnetics or an undergraduate general physics course that covered electromagnetics in moderate detail.