Book excerpt: This book contains 99 of the papers that were presented at the 6th in the series of Symposia on Characterization of Porous Solids held in Alicante, Spain, May 2002. Written by leading international specialists in the subject, the contributions represent an up-to-date and authoritative account of recent developments around the world in the major methods used to characterize porous solids. The book is a useful work of reference for anyone interested in characterizing porous solids, such as MCM-41 mesoporous materials, pillared clays, etc. Papers on pore structure determination using gas adsorption feature strongly, together with papers on small angle scattering methods, mercury porosimetry, microcalorimetry, scanning probe microscopies, and image analysis.