This well known collection of molecular absorption spectra, which now includes 2461 spectra housed in 14 volumes, becomes-as it grows-ever more valuable. Volume XIV includes many heterocyclic compounds displaying aromaticity.

Following the pioneer study of Rosenfeld (1928) the early development of the quantum theory of optical activity from the mid-1930's was largely an American venture, centring on the Princeton group and Cornell. The subject has been of abiding interest to Henry Eyring who, with Dennis Caldwell, covers in this book the salient features of progress in this field over the past thirty-five years.The book opens with an account of the classical electromagnetic theory of optical-activity, principally in its coupled-oscillator form, and the chapter culminates with Werner Kuhn's eIegant, but erroneous, octahedral coupled-oscillator model for trigonal dihedral metal complexes. The main aspects of the quantum theory of optical rotation are then covered in a succession of three chapters; the first concerned with the derivation of rotational strengths from the time-dependent Schrodinger equation; the second with the specific models of the harmonic oscillator, the coupled-oscillator, and the inherently-dissymmetric chromophore ; and the third with a perturbation treatment within the general theory carried in principle to high order, but truncated in practice at the fourth.Thereafter follows a brief chapter on specific chromophores, namely, the carbonyl group, benzene derivatives, and transition metal complexes. At this point the discussion moves off at a tangent to brief treatment of the Faraday effect, vibronic and exciton interactions and the Kerr effect, but the main thread is picked up again in the final chapter, devoted to methods of interpretation, where the discussion of specific conjugated and non-conjugated sys tems is resumed.The treatment throughout the book is fundamental and very general with relatively few particular applications. Neither Kirkwood's polarizability theory nor the use of pseudoscalar functions as sector rules receive the attention that their significance might warrant, but these, and the erratic order of the special topics, are minor blemishes. The book is recommended to all quantum chemists and to students of optical activity whose interests range beyond the purely empirical aspects of their subject.