Book Reviews

Books available for review

If you would like to review one of new publications listed below, please email the Editor, Dr Julian Heath giving your Reader Number, your full address and brief details of your qualifications as a reviewer of the book you have chosen. We would like a 600 word review from you and in return you get to keep the book. See the existing book reviews for examples of our Book Review style. If you are not sure if you are qualified to review the content of any of these books, go to the publisher's or any book reseller's websites where you can usually read the contents and index.

Updated 4 February 2010

NEW! page title link Cytoskeleton Methods and Protocols, Second Edition (Methods in Molecular Biology, Vol. 586), Ray H. Gavin

(Ed), 2010, pp 390,  Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-60761-375-6

Handbook of Sample Preparation for Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-Ray Microanalysis 
Patrick Echlin, Cambridge Analytical Microscopy, UK
ISBN 978-0-387-85730-5 - Hardback 330 pages - Published by Springer 2009

Latest book reviews

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The Nucleus, Vol 2, R. Hancock (ed)

10 September 2009
In The Nucleus, researchers from more than forty leading international laboratories describe state-of-the-art methods for isolating nuclei and their components and for studying their structure and activities, including some pathology-associated features. Volume 2: Chromatin, Transcription, Envelope, Proteins, Dynamics, and Imaging presents biophysical approaches to study the mechanical properties of nuclei, together with a comprehensive range of imaging methods. These include FISH, FRAP, FRET, molecular beacons, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, single molecule tracking, and combing DNA for optical microscopy, recognition imaging for atomic force microscopy, and hybridisation, tomography, and spectroscopic imaging for electron microscopy.
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The Basics of Crystallography and Diffraction, 3rd Edition by Christopher Hammond, University of Leeds, UK. ISBN 978-0-19-954644

29 August 2009
At almost 450 pages, this handsome book is ideal for any student or researcher who needs a basic understanding of crystallography and diffraction. The consistently high standard of presentation and explanation, the relatively low price (~£30 for the paperback edition), and the fact that this book is now in its third edition tells you everything you need to know. The third edition is longer, by a hundred pages, than the second and is split in to two halves that cover crystallography and diffraction.
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BOOK REVIEW: Electron Diffraction in the Transmission Electron Microscope

19 January 2006 | 1 comments
One of the most powerful features of a transmission electron microscope is that it can provide electron diffraction patterns from the area where real-space images are obtained. Electron diffraction has become a very useful technique in structural characterization of materials in the use of a transmission electron microscope. Though often less intuitive than the images, electron diffraction patterns contain complementary, sometimes more convenient for analysis, and equally rich information on the examined specimen...
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BOOK REVIEW: The Basics of Crystallography and Diffraction, 2nd Edn

19 January 2006
This book forms a comprehensive introduction to the study of crystallography and diffraction. The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying solid state chemistry, physics, materials science and earth sciences. However, the clear and comprehensive nature of this text will also appeal to entry level undergraduates and more experienced researchers in these disciplines. With respect to the first edition, the content of the book has been considerably revised, expanded (from 242 to 331 pages) and updated, with the addition of material of more general scientific interest closely allied to the concepts of crystallography and diffraction...
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BOOK REVIEW: Electron Backscatter Diffraction in Materials Science

19 January 2006
This book describes several aspects of the electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) technique, which is a powerful crystallographic tool in electron microscopy. Most chapters are either explanatory or theoretical. Three are devoted to product descriptions from commercial vendors. The later chapters include detailed case studies, which demonstrate the various applications...
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BOOK REVIEW: Grain Boundaries: Their Microstructure and Chemistry

19 January 2006
Materials science needs a microscopic, if not a nanoscopic knowledge in order to correctly understand and improve the properties of engineering materials. Most of the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of inorganic materials are directly influenced by their microstructure (i.e. size, shape, and orientation of grains and phases composing the bulk) and this fact is strongly affected by the atomic composition and distribution. For materials composed of grains it is obviously of primary importance to know the zone of bonding of these grains, i.e. the grain boundaries. This has been a must since the beginning of the last century. Thanks to the development of investigation techniques characterising this period a dramatic quantity of data concerning grain boundaries and their chemistry as well as their links to macroscopic properties has been collected and elaborated...
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BOOK REVIEW: Resin Microscopy and On-Section Immunocytochemistry, 2nd Edition

19 January 2006
Working with immunocytochemical techniques three players must primarily taken into account: (a) the resin, (b) the labelling agent, and (c), which is sometimes more important, the protocol applied. For the latter, most lab workers will agree to the dictum "Never change a winning team". Indeed, only a few reasons justify changing an effective experimental setup: testing new resins, switching from epoxy to acrylic ones, or utilising other tissue samples. These reasons could explain why your recipe, working fine for so much years, will not work any more. Now you can vary your protocol according to trial-and-error, or - and I recommend you to do so- you could read this book...
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BOOK REVIEW: Fundamentals of Crystallography, 2nd Edition

19 January 2006
Giacovazzo et al. have written the second edition of their book that describes and explains a virtual cornucopia of topics in the broad field of modern crystallography. The chapters are titled: Symmetry in Crystals, Crystallographic Computing, The Diffraction of X-rays by Crystals, Beyond Ideal Crystals, Experimental Methods in X-ray and Neutron Crystallography, Solution and Refinement of Crystal Structures, Mineral and Inorganic Crystals, Molecules and Molecular Crystals, Protein Crystallography, and Physical Properties of Crystals: phenomenology and modelling. All of this is laid out in a generous 825 pages...
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BOOK REVIEW: A Quantum Approach to Condensed Matter Physics

19 January 2006
Conventional text books on solid state physics tend to begin with geometrical descriptions and methods for analysing crystal structures. It is refreshing, then, to find that A Quantum Approach to Condensed Matter Physics acknowledges from the outset that most of the interesting properties of solids arise from excitations, and that the very first chapter introduces excitations such as phonons, solitons, magnons and plasmons...
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BOOK REVIEW: Quick Photoshop for Research: A Guide to Digital Imaging for Photoshop 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x

19 January 2006
In the age of digital imaging, knowledge of a program such as Photoshop is vital for researchers. This book has simplified the workings of this program, for both Mac and Windows users, by dissecting out only the information that is necessary for scientific researchers...
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