Modern crystallography. Vol. 2. Structure of Crystals. (Third edition). Edited by B. K. Vainshtein, V. M. Fridkin and V. L. Indenbom. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2000. Pp. xx + 520. Price DM 198. ISBN 3-540-67474-8.

The second edition of this book was reviewed by this editor in this journal in 1995 [Acta Cryst. (1995), B51, 893–894 ]. Readers need look no further for a review of this `third edition'. To describe this book as a `third edition' is to ignore the distinction between `edition' and `reprint'. The surviving co-author states in his preface that `some corrections have been made to the text and some additions made to the bibliography' of the previous edition. I did not look in depth for the `corrections', but of the 15 additions to the bibliography, 12 are to Springer publications, including one to work pre-dating the second edition, and of the three others one is to an 1980 book by that co-author omitted from the previous edition. The list of references and the uncorrected text remain the same as in the second edition.

All of this is a great pity. While it is useful to have this work in print for the sake of some of the older fundamental material it contains, another opportunity has been lost to provide a revision that would justify the use of the word `Modern' in the title. Potential buyers would do well to seek out a used copy of the second edition, which retailed at six tenths of the price of this reprint.