Book excerpt: Chemists have been aware of the existence of coordination compounds con taining organic macrocyclic ligands since the first part of this century ; however, only during the past few years have they expanded research into the chemistry of these compounds. The expansion was initiated in the early 1960s by the synthesis and characterization of compounds containing some new macrocyclic ligands. The synthesis of compounds which may serve as model systems for some natural products containing large rings as ligands provided the main goal for the early expansion of research effort; indeed, a recurrent theme behind much of the reported chemistry has been the analogy between synthetic macrocyclic compounds and many natural-product systems. More recently, the emphases of reported research have ranged over the whole spectrum of chemistry, and the number of publications that discuss macrocyclic chemistry has increased at a dramatic rate. The completed research has been reported in a variety of journals throughout the world but there has been no previous attempt to bring the major developments together under one cover. This book, therefore, attempts to satisfy the need for a single source in which there is both a collection and a correlation of information concerning the coordination chemistry of macrocyclic compounds. The chapters in this book discuss various aspects of macrocyclic chemistry, and while these chapters as a whole constitute an in-depth survey of the state-of the-art of the field, each chapter is written as a complete unit.