book reviews
Acta Cryst.
(2018). B
74
, 253–254
253
Intermolecular Interactions in Crystals: Fundamen-
tals of Crystal Engineering.
Edited by Juan J Novoa.
Royal Society of Chemistry, 2017, Pp. 764.
Price GBP 99.99 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-78262-173-7.
Gautam R. Desiraju*
Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, CV Raman Road, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560012,
India. *Correspondence e-mail: [email protected]
It is very difficult to produce something, which is both ‘a textbook for Masters and PhD
students’ and ‘a reference book for researchers’. So, when I read the preface by the
editor, which states these aims, I was quite looking forward to reading the book itself.
However, I was disappointed at the end of my enterprise, and doubly so because the book
did not appear to me to have succeeded in its aims either as a textbook or as a reference
work, barring certain sections.
Any textbook needs to be simple and short, and it should contain non-controversial
and easy to understand concepts and principles. The subject matter, including equations
and quantitative information, needs to flow in a manner so that the novice learns and at
the same time feels impelled to continue reading. A reference work on the other hand
contains up to date scholarly material and, in part maybe, even contested and debatable
opinions. The features that respectively define a textbook and a reference book are
inherently contradictory and in attempting to combine them, the editor was perhaps
being unrealistically ambitious.
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