Fundamentals of crystallography , 2nd edition. Edited by C. Giacovazzo. IUCr Texts on Crystallography 7. Oxford: IUCr/Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxi + 825 + included CD. Price (hardback) GBP 75.00, ISBN 0‐19‐850957‐X; (paperback) GBP 39.50, ISBN 0‐19‐850958‐8.

The ®rst edition of this book was published in 1992 and reviewed in this journal [Acta Cryst. (1993), A49, 373±374]. According to the editor, in this second edition, `Most of the material in the ®rst edition has been preserved, important new topics have been added and the presentation of the old ones has been improved'. Your reviewer ®nds this to be so. Major changes include a new chapter, Beyond ideal crystals, written by the editor, which gathers together material previously scattered throughout the earlier edition (and often somewhat incongruously placed) and adds to it new topics so as to systematize the treatment of scattering from real crystals and non-crystalline scatterers. It deals with crystal twins, diffuse scattering, modulated structures, quasicrystals, liquid crystals, the paracrystal, and diffraction from amorphous and liquid systems. The coverage is mathematically intensive and is supplemented by photographs of actual and simulated diffraction patterns for protein, RNA and quasicrystals. The original chapter on Experimental methods in X-ray crystallography has been expanded, with Gilberto Artioli joining Hugo L. Monaco as coauthor, to include neutron scattering. Fernando Scordari's chapter on Ionic crystals in the ®rst edition has been replaced by a books received