Polymer International 43 (1997) 000È000

Book Reviews

durability : degradation, stabilization, and lifetime pre-PolymerdictionACS advances in chemistry series 249Edited by R. L. Clough, N. C. Billingham and K. T. Gillen.American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 1995.pp. xiv] 712, price US$139.95ISBN 0-8412-3134-6

This book comprises some 39 papers (with about 90 contrib-uting authors) originally given at an ACS symposium inChicago in August 1993. It covers three main subject areas,the Ðrst two each Ðlling about 270 pages of the book and thethird making up the remaining section. The section on degra-dation includes work both in the presence and absence of airand both thermal and photodegradation are represented,whilst that on stabilization is concerned only with oxidizingconditions.

This reviewer has doubts about the value of publication inhardback form of large conference proceedings, since therange of topics is usually insufficiently focused to provide avaluable reference work. Such material should appear in the

research journals, possibly in special conference issues.Specialist research papers naturally reÑect the viewpoints ofthe contributors, many of whom are established authorities,rather than giving a fully balanced overview such as onemight expect to get in a textbook or review article. On theother hand, workers in these areas are likely to Ðnd materialof interest within the volume, although it reÑects the situationessentially as seen in 1992, without reference to more recentdevelopments in fast-growing or controversial areas. Oneuseful group of papers are the four on aspects of chemilumine-scence as related to the oxidation of polymers (73 pages).

However, this book is a very good example of its type. It isattractively produced in a similar format throughout, whichmakes it pleasant to handle and dip into, and, unlike manybooks of conference proceedings, has a very good 27 pagesubject index (in addition to the contents list) which goes intosufficient detail to allow the reader to assess which topics areincluded.

C.I. McNeill

1Polymer International 0959-8103/97/$17.50 1997 SCI. Printed in Great Britain(