Book excerpt: This volume contains the lectures presented at the Advanced Study Institute on "New Trends in Coal Science" which was held at Datca, HUgla, Turkey during August 23 - September 4, 1987. The book includes 23 chapters which were originally written for the meeting by some of the world's foremost investigators. Chemists everywhere are carrying out exciting research that has important implications for the energy and fuels industries and for society in general. For the near future, coal resources will continue to be of great importance and science and technology of the highest order are needed to extend this fossil energy resource and to utilize it in an economical way that is also environmentally acceptable. These were the main purposes for the organization of this NATO ASI. The Institute constituted two working weeks on structure and reactivity of coal and so is the book. Through the presentation of many specific recent results on structure and characterization of coal and its products the potential of new instrumental techniques is presented in the first part of the book. Finally the reactivity of coals at different conditions both in laboratory and industry is discussed. We hope that the volume will be of great use to research workers from academic and industrial background. In addition it could serve as a textbook for a graduate course on coal science and technology.