In summary, this is an informativeand timely book that describes the mostimportant methods of synthesis andapplications of ordered porous nano-structures. It is a good, though notcomprehensive, reference work forresearchers working in the field ofordered porous materials.

Michael J. SailorDepartment of Chemistry andBiochemistryUniversity of California, La Jolla (USA)

Inorganic Chemistry in AqueousSolution

By Jack Barrett.Royal Society ofChemistry, Cam-bridge 2004.184 pp., softcover£ 14.95.—ISBN0-85404-471-X

This is Number 21 in the RSCs series ofTutorial Chemistry Texts, and bothauthor and publisher are to be congratu-lated on a job well done.

Two introductory chapters on wateritself give clear accounts of its structureand solvating characteristics. They arefollowed by chapters on the forms of

ions in solution, on thermodynamics andelectrode potentials (a difficult topicthat is very clearly put across), and onthe stabilities (actually redox stabilities)of ions in solution. Then come threechapters of descriptive chemistry on theelements of the s and p blocks, the dblock, and the f block. The emphasis ofthese three is on “periodicity”, and thetrends and comparisons are well broughtout. One cannot expect too muchdescriptive detail in a work of under200 pages, but in fact a great deal hasbeen achieved, and the level seems justright for the target audience—which Itake to be mainly second-year under-graduates, though that doesn+t seem tobe made clear. The aims of each chapterare set out in tabular form, the discus-sions are punctuated with worked exam-ples, and there are further study prob-lems with answers at the back of thebook.

There is a strong emphasis on sys-tematization and explanation, usingthermodynamic analyses to identify fac-tors that contribute to particular chem-ical properties, such as solubility of saltsor standard reduction potentials ofmetal ions. At a deeper level of inter-pretation, molecular orbitals and, whererelevant, relativity theory, are deployed.

At times I was wishing for morepictures and fewer numbers. Frost (volt-equivalent) diagrams are often moredirectly informative than Latimer dia-grams, though both have their uses. Totake one small example, in describingthe structure of [Mo2(OH2)8]4+, nodoubt the Mo�Mo bond is quadruple,

and the description of the electron-count is clear, but is it not more clearto point out the eclipsed conformationof the Mo2�O8 skeleton, in contrast tothe staggered conformation of, say,C2Cl6?

Mention of an oxygen-free moleculeunderlines what this book does notcontain. It is, almost exclusively, anaccount of the elements in their statescoordinated with water, as broadlydefined to include oxo and hydroxocomplexes and oxyacids. The strengthof Br:nsted acids, including the hydro-gen halides, is almost the only topicbeyond this. Lewis acids and bases get amention but hardly more, so althoughthe factors affecting the stability of HFare well explained (including the recentdiscovery that in aqueous media thedominant species is actually the ion pair[H3O]+F�), there is nothing on thehalide complexes of the metals, eventhrough in some aqueous solutions of“salts” the complexes and ion pairs maybe the dominant species.

But it is best to do one job well, andif the last remark is a criticism, it reallyexpresses the hope that another goodbook, on coordination chemistry inaqueous solution, is still to come. Thisis an excellent text, well written andattractively produced.

Roderick CannonSchool of Chemical SciencesUniversity of East AngliaNorwich (UK)

DOI: 10.1002/anie.200485370

Books

658 www.angewandte.org 2 2007 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 657 – 658