This is a book for crystal chemistry lovers. It is beautifully produced and is comprised of seven chapters. The first four are a useful introduction to the topic, and the remaining three delve into different ways of looking at structures, with an emphasis on the concepts of the author and some colleagues (in particular, Michael O’Keeffe, Bruce Hyde, and Sten Andersson). All of the figures are available on the Internet if you show proof of purchase of the book.

Chapter 1 begins with the polyhedral approach to structure building, which is familiar to chemistry undergraduates. This leads to building blocks, cubes, and unit cells. The chapter clearly explains simple cubes, body-centered cubes, face-centered cubes, the seven crystalline systems, and the idea of interstitial sites and radius ratios. Chapter 2 describes symmetry, space groups, and miller indices. This is a good introduction for the following chapters.

A discussion of various common structures begins in chapter 3, starting with rutile. The description includes the joining of polyhedra and the calculation of bond distances. The author is somewhat dismissive of computer programs, and there is no mention of Crystallographic Information Files (CIFs). The latter omission is surprising, as they are required by most publications that include new structures. Today’s students need to understand the fundamentals, but also modern methods of crystal chemistry. There is also no mention of TiO₂ polymorphs, anatase and brookite, but the author discusses in detail the various structures of tungsten bronzes (first formed by Wöhler, but here referred to as Magnéli bronzes). He also states that there are distinct W⁵⁺ and W⁶⁺ ions in the bronzes, and that the electrons hop from one ion to another, rather than there being free electrons and the color is derived from the free electrons. Despite these weaknesses, this is overall a strong and readable chapter introducing most of the major structural types, including spinel, layered halides, perovskites, and pyrochlore.

Chapter 4 extends the discussion of chapter 3 into distorted structures, again using a polyhedral approach: Tilting, disorder, and superstructures, among others, are used as examples of nonideality. Point defects are briefly described. These are followed by a short description of extended defects, such as the shear planes found on reduction of the tungsten and molybdenum oxides.

The last three chapters are devoted mostly to different approaches of looking at and describing structures, including the net, rod, brick, and spin approaches. These are likely to be of most interest to the experienced chemist/crystallographer rather than the student. The book finishes with an appendix describing the various polyhedra, with all the angles and distances given; there are also drawings of the shapes necessary to construct the various polyhedra. At the end, there is a bibliography of “useful books” (dating from 1970 to 1996) and “some pioneering articles” (1948–2012) in the field.

As noted previously, this is a book for the lover of crystal chemistry written by one of the pioneers of solid-state chemistry. It is a personal viewpoint; therefore, it lacks the modern use of a computer in crystal chemistry, either for looking at structures or for the creation of new structures and materials. It also lacks a set of discussion questions that might be useful for the classroom.

Reviewer: M. Stanley Whittingham, Distinguished Professor, Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering, Binghamton University, The State University of New York, USA.