The editors divide the text into eight sections. Part I, consisting of six chapters, develops a detailed “theory” of analytical chemistry. Included are discussions of important issues such as traceability and the need for standards, quality indicators (such as accuracy and precision), the analytical process, the interaction between analytical chemists and clients, and the intersection of analytical chemistry with government regulations. Although most of these topics are common to other analytical chemistry textbooks, their presentation here is more detailed and carefully thought out.

Part II provides both a thorough treatment of basic statistics and an introduction to the field of chemometrics. Among the impressive range of topics treated in these two chapters are descriptive statistics, t-tests, F-tests, chi-squared testing, ANOVA, the propagation of error, least-squares fitting of calibration equations, Savitzky–Golay digital filtering, factorial experimental designs, simplex optimization, pattern recognition, multivariate analysis, and spectral library searching. The depth of coverage here is sufficient to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the mathematics behind the relevant calculations.

The nine chapters comprising Part III provide coverage of analytical methods based on chemical reactivity. Following an introductory chapter on chemical equilibria are chapters on acid–base titrations, complexation titrations, redox titrations, precipitation titrations, thermal methods of analysis, liquid–liquid, liquid–solid, gas–liquid, and gas–solid extractions, and kinetic-based methods of analysis. The treatment of these topics is consistent with that found in other textbooks although there are few practical examples of analytical applications.

Electroanalytical chemistry is covered in one chapter, which also doubles as Part IV. Included in this chapter are brief introductions to potentiometry, voltammetry, amperometry, and coulometry. This limited coverage, which amounts to approximately 5% of the textbook’s pages, is in keeping with the general reduction in the treatment of electroanalytical chemistry in other textbooks. It is worth noting, however, that additional coverage of this material is provided in later chapters on chemical and biochemical sensors.

Parts V–VII provide fairly standard coverage of instrumental methods of analysis including separations, spectroscopy, surface analysis, and structural analysis. Among the many methods covered in these 10 chapters are gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, electrophoresis, field-flow fractionation, atomic emission and absorption spectroscopies, X-ray fluorescence, neutron activation, UV–vis spectroscopy, IR and Raman spectroscopies, NMR, inorganic and organic mass spectrometries, photoelectron spectroscopy, secondary ion mass spectrometry, scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopies, and X-ray diffraction. In general these chapters provide a good background in basic theory and instrument design but are weak in practical examples of analytical applications.

One of this textbook’s real strengths is the final section, Part VIII, that focuses on several important trends in modern analytical chemistry including automation, miniaturization, chemically-specific and biochemically-specific sensors, high-throughput screening techniques, and process analytical chemistry. These eight chapters are well written, reasonably up-to-date, and provide a more expansive treatment of this material than that found in other textbooks in analytical chemistry.

With some exceptions, the references in most chapters are a bit old and could have been updated when preparing this new edition. The inclusion of worked examples is uneven from chapter to chapter, appearing in approximately one-third of the chapters. The end-of-chapter problems generally are of the short-answer variety; the relative lack of quantitative problems seems an odd choice. An appendix includes a tutorial on matrix algebra, a helpful list of acronyms, a useful guide to the analytical literature, and the requisite tables of constants and statistical tables.

Because this textbook was written to conform to the approved curriculum in analytical chemistry of the Division of Analytical Chemistry of the Federation of European Chemical Societies, instructors in European colleges and universities will find it a good match to their courses. Instructors in U.S. colleges and universities, however, will likely find that the textbook is an awkward fit to a conventional two-course analytical curriculum consisting of Quantitative Analysis and Instrumental Analysis. In either case, at 1209 pages and more than 2800 grams, this is not a textbook that students are likely to carry with them to the classroom or laboratory!