Sethna's book distills the core ideas of statistical mechanics to make room for new advances important to information theory, complexity, and modern biology. Aimed at advanced undergraduates and early graduate students, Sethna's text explores everything from chaos through information theory to life at the end of the universe. - ;In each generation, scientists must redefine their fields: abstracting, simplifying and distilling the previous standard topics to make room for new advances and methods. Sethna's book takes this step for statistical mechanics - a field rooted in physics and chemistry