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CHOICE Review

As the title suggests, Parish intends to provide an introduction to four important types of spectroscopy encountered in the inorganic laboratory. He does an excellent job of developing each method using a minimum of theory and a minimum of complicated examples. The reader is referred to other sources for more detailed theory and for very complicated applications. This does not imply that the book is simple or simpleminded; there is enough theory and detail to whet the appetite, and the examples are carefully chosen to illustrate the points discussed in the text. Even though this is not meant to be a textbook, it could easily be used as such since each chapter has an introduction, a discussion of up-to-date techniques, and a series of problems with answers using examples from the literature. The material is covered in a way that develops ideas for using these spectroscopic techniques in research. The chapter on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is particularly thorough, since most of the isotopes used in NMR and various multiple resonance techniques such as 2-D, correlated spectroscopy (COSY), and internuclear double resonance (INDOR), are discussed. A very readable and useful book for undergraduate and graduate students in inorganic chemistry.