British engineer Spurgin has spent most of his career in the airplane manufacturing and the nuclear power industries, specializing in assessing human reliability, which he explains is about designing operations to take into account what humans are and are not likely to do. He offers a handbook for practitioners, discussing such aspects as data and data sources; choice of methods; training of individuals; using simulators; and relationships between psychology, human factors, accident analysis, and human reliability. His topics include current models and methods, accidents in various industries from the perspectives of conventional analysis and human resource assessment techniques, the International Space Station as a detailed case study, and the impact of systematic data collection on training. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)