Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Norma M. Allewell, Linda O. Narhi, and Ivan Rayment -- Structural, physical, and chemical principles / Norma M. Allewell, Linda O. Narhi, and Ivan Rayment -- Optical spectroscopic methods for the analysis of biological macromolecules / Linda O. Narhi, Cynthia H. Li, Ranjini Ramachander, Juraj Svitel, and Yijia Jiang -- Diffraction and scattering by X-ray and neutrons / Ivan Rayment -- Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy / Thomas C. Pochapsky and Susan Sondej Pochapsky -- Electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy / John H. Golbeck and Art van der Est -- Mass spectrometry / Igor A. Kaltashov and Cedric E. Bobst -- Single-molecule methods / Paul J. Bujalowski, Michael Sherman, and Andres F. Oberhauser -- Helicase unwinding at the replication fork / Divya Nandakumar and Smita S. Patel -- Rotary motor ATPases / Stephan Wilkens -- Biophysical approaches to understanding the action of myosin as a molecular machine / Mihály Kovács and András Málnási-Csizmadia -- Future prospects / Norma M. Allewell, Igor A. Kaltashov, Linda O. Narhi, and Ivan Rayment.