Phasing in Crystallography: A Modern Perspective . By Carmelo Giacovazzo. IUCr Texts on Crystallography, No. 20. International Union of Crystallography/Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 432. Price GBP 65.00 (hardback). ISBN 978‐0‐19‐968699‐5.

Carmelo Giacovazzo’s newly published book, Phasing in Crystallography: A Modern Perspective, is a capstone on his impressive bibliography of publications: his 1992 textbook Fundamentals of Crystallography, authored along with a team of special-topics co-authors; his comprehensive 1998 monograph Direct Phasing in Crystallography: Fundamentals and Applications; his authoritative 2008 chapter entitled Direct Methods in International Tables for Crystallography, Vol. B, Reciprocal Space; and his and his co-workers almost 300 specialized papers published in Acta Crystallographica since 1973. A chapter-by-chapter description of the new book’s contents is not needed here, because in the book’s Preface Professor Giacovazzo gives succinct, clear summaries of the point and purpose of each of the 15 chapters and 35 (mainly mathematical) chapter appendices. The careful organization of the book is outlined clearly in a detailed Table of