Royal Society of Chemistry: Cambridge, UK, 2000. viii + 196 pp. Paperback: ISBN 0-85404-617-8. £9.95.

In my experience, a tutorial is useful to help someone help himself or herself. The material is explained in enough detail so that a person can learn about a topic, and the questions are helpful to test the reader's knowledge of the material just presented. If it hadn't been for Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory by Vincent, I would have had a much harder time learning group theory. Therefore, I was looking forward to learning some descriptive chemistry about the main-group elements from Book 3 of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Tutorial Chemistry Texts (a series also including tutorials on quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and stereochemistry, among others). To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

Henderson states on page 1 that "it is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of atomic structure and bonding." I believe that physical chemistry and a thorough descriptive inorganic chemistry course--one lacking in many inorganic curricula--might provide the reader enough background, defeating the purpose of the text. The overall problem with the text is that the questions often cannot be answered by looking solely at the material in the chapters. Henderson's questions are sometimes answered by material in later chapters. In Chapter 2, a question about boron hydrides wasn't even discussed in the text! Sometimes, questions are answered by references in the chapter that are vague, by checking the solutions to worked problems, or by linking two or more concepts that are mentioned only in passing. Even after looking at the answers, I was still confused sometimes.

Henderson does a poor job presenting introductory material such as Lewis dot structures and nomenclature. A nomenclature review (especially one emphasizing the IUPAC system of naming compounds) is nonexistent. Lewis dot structures are presented with no lone pairs around ligands. The rules for predicting shapes of compounds from VSEPR theory are confusing. Henderson also uses Wade's rules to predict shapes of boron compounds; however, I feel using Lipscomb's styx rules would be more helpful if included as well.

I cannot recommend this text as a tutorial, as a reference, or even as a supplementary text in an inorganic chemistry class. Although not intended as a tutorial, Mackay and Mackay's An Introduction to Modern Inorganic Chemistry makes a much better book for teaching oneself main-group inorganic chemistry. The RSC would do well to pull this book from its tutorial series and make extensive revisions before reissuing the text.