GENERAL CONSIDERATIONSHistory, Books, Reviews, and Student Experiments. The discovery of TLC by Nikolai Izmailov and Maria Schreiber in 1938 was reviewed (A1). The first TLC book arranged by discipline contained chapters covering applications in bacteriology, plant sciences, parasitology, entomology, clinical chemistry, environmental analysis, food analysis, forensic toxicology, pharmaceutical analysis, veterinary toxicology, and analysis of skin secretions in vertebrates (A2). A book on TLC in German contained a random assortment of chapters on techniques and applications, including uses in a clinical laboratory, properties of different layers, determination of the pesticide propham, optimization of mobile phases, video densitometry, determination of PAHs in water, determination of water solubility of higher fatty acids, visualizing reagents for higher fatty acids, pharmaceutical analysis, on-line coupling of AMD and HPLC for determination of plant protection agents in water, and enzymic detection of pollutants (A3). A TLC atlas for plant drug analysis was published (A4). The fourth edition of Thin Layer Chromatography-Techniques and Applications by B. Fried and J. Sherma is in production and will be published by Marcel Dekker, Inc. in late 1998 or early 1999.Review articles were published on the following topics: instruments and techniques (A5), determination of organic compounds (A6), food analysis (A7), environmental analysis (A8), and general progress and development (A9). Other pertinent reviews are cited in the sections below.