Book excerpt: From a leading researcher in optical spectroscopy and electronic properties of novel semiconductors comes this much-needed toolbox title to understand the concepts behind the spectroscopy of advanced organic materials and how they work. The book thus provides basic and practical knowledge on material photophysics for planning, carrying out and understanding experiments in spectroscopy. It contains a collection of simple practical rules for data analysis and interpretation, together with a list of experimental techniques, including the latest methods. Each topic is complemented by examples taken from forefront research on nanomaterials, photovoltaics and photonics, and each chapter includes a discussion, examples, topical boxes, tables and figures. The whole is rounded off by a bibliography for further reading, major references and appendixes containing theoretical derivation and numerical code. The result is a quick guide for the spectroscopist who needs to grasp the concept of the experiments.