Recent years have seen a considerable growth of interest in chemical aspects of the electronic structure of solids. Most books on solids are addressed to physicists, and present a more mathematical and fundamental account of the subject than is appropriate for students of chemistry. The present book takes a different view, and shows how the electronic structures and properties of solids can be described in terms familiar to chemists.

The first three chapters give a fairly elementary account, suitable for undergraduate students with a reasonable grounding in inorganic and physical chemistry. The later chapters present slightly more advanced aspects, including many topics of current research interest, such as metal-insulator transitions, low-dimensional solids and 'molecular metals', and the properties of surfaces. The discussion is illustrated by a wide variety of examples.