Book excerpt: ''Organic Petrology'' is a new book, but one with antecedents. It is rooted in the famous ''Stach''s Textbook of Coal Petrology'''' (1975) and its predecessor ''Stach''s Lehrbuch der Kohlenpetrologie'''' (1935) but has been completely revised and expanded in order to incorporate a huge amount of new data obtained in the two decades since the publication of the 3rd edition of Stach. ''Organic Petrology'' now covers the whole field of the petrology of organic material in rocks. The book addresses researchers, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, people concerned with the assessment, mining and use of coal and oil shales, and exploration workers interested in the occurrence and the evaluation of petroleum and natural gas and their source rocks.