Book excerpt: Solid State Chemistry today is a frontier area of mainstream chemistry, and plays a vital role in the development of materials. The present work, consisting of a selection of Prof. C N R Rao's papers, covers most of the important aspects of solid state chemistry and provides the flavor of the subject, showing how the subject has evolved over the years. The book is up-to-date, and will be useful to students, teachers, beginning researchers and practitioners in solid state chemistry as well as in the broader area of materials science.