The periodic table provides an excellent basis for understanding the enormous developments in inorganic chemistry and continues to play a fundamental role in the planning of new developments in chemistry. The first part of this book shows how the periodic table is constructed on the basis of the atomic structures of the elements, and the later chapters, using the periodic table as central theme, describe the physical and chemical properties of the elements and their compounds. For the second edition, the authors have added a fuller discussion of chemical bonding, emphasized the problem of classifying compounds too rigorously as purely ionic or covalent, and incorporated more material on the anomalous behavior of first row elements and the discovery of new elements. "The arguments are so clearly and logically developed that the book achieves an unusually coherent account of the concept of periodicity."--The Times Higher Education Supplement, on the first edition