This book, which brings together virtually all the methods which can be used to identify gas chromatograph peaks, is a useful addition to those on the practice of gas chromatography. It considerably extends and updates a 1966 review by the same authors to cover work published up to November 1969.
After a short introductory chapter, the second chapter of 33 pages is devoted to a theoretical consideration of retention and column selectivity. This is a topic which may not be often fully appreciated in analytical circles--the authors' justificat i o n -b u t is well covered in a number of gas chromatography texts and does not merit the space given to it in a book on identification techniques. The succeeding chapters discuss identification based on retention data; selective abstraction; chemical modification of the sample; pyrolysis; molecular weight measurement; detector response; and peak trapping for analysis on ancillary equipment, leading to the final two chapters on spectroscopic methods of identification. Each individual chapter gives a useful and comprehensive introduction to the technique described, though the reader must bear in mind that developments have occurred in a number of these techniques since tl~e book was written.
A comparison of the relative merits of the techniques described would have been useful, and one felt, in view of the increasing routine use of the combined gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, that more emphasis should have been given to this and less to the more "classical" methods of identification.
Despite these few limitations, this is a well written, easily read book, containing few errors, and is highly recommended to all those concerned with the use of the gas chromatograph.
A. N. Freedman (Leatherhead)