I read this book with great interest. The book is an important contribution to unsaturated soil mechanics and slope stability analysis. The five young authors are to be congratulated for this comprehensive collection of work on the analytical, numerical, and stochastic modelling of rainfall-induced failure of soil slopes. The book consists of two major sections, where the first part describes the infiltration and seepage analysis, limit equilibrium and coupled hydro-mechanical slope stability analysis including special chapters on surface cracks and colluvium soils. The second part addresses reliability and probability approaches characterising the uncertainties of soil parameters and the effects of heterogeneous soils, respectively. The authors present state-of-the art techniques in analysis and provide an exhaustive bibliography.

A feature of this book is numerous illustrative examples and field cases accompanying the theoretical explanations, supported by detailed descriptions of the calculation using popular FE programs, MATLAB codes or VBA functions, and lists of useful parameters. The readers can make their own experience by following the instructions, which makes it an excellent text book for graduate students.

The book is focused on the initiation of slope instability. The stability analysis is focused on the failure mechanism due to the loss of matric suction. As such, post-failure analysis and slope failure caused by liquefaction are not included in this book.