New textbooks at all levels of chemistry appear with great regularity.
Some fields like basic biochemistry, organic reaction mechanisms, and
chemical thermodynamics are well represented by many excellent texts,
and new or revised editions are published sufficiently often to keep up
with progress in research. However, some areas of chemistry, especially
many of those taught at the graduate level, suffer from a real lack of
up-to-date textbooks. The most serious needs occur in fields that are
rapidly changing. Textbooks in these subjects usually have to be written
by scientists actually involved in the research which is advancing the
field. It is not often easy to persuade such individuals to set time
aside to help spread the knowledge they have accumulated. Our goal, in
this series, is to pinpoint areas of chemistry where recent progress has
outpaced what is covered in any available textbooks, and then seek out
and persuade experts in these fields to produce relatively concise but
instructive introductions to their fields. These should serve the needs
of one semester or one quarter graduate courses in chemistry and
biochemistry. In some cases the availability of texts in active research
areas should help stimulate the creation of new courses.