Book excerpt: This invaluable book distils the research accomplishments of Professor Fred Basolo during the five decades when he served as a world leader in the modern renaissance of inorganic chemistry. Its primary focus is on the very important area of chemistry known as coordination chemistry.Most of the elements in the periodic table are metals, and most of the chemistry of metals involves coordination chemistry. This is the case in the currently significant areas of research, including organometallic homogenous catalysis, biological reactions of metalloproteins, and even the solid state extended structures of new materials. In these systems, the metals are of primary importance because they are the sites of ligand substitution or redox reactions. In the solid materials, the coordination number of the metal and its stereochemistry are of major importance.Some fifty years of research on transition metal complexes carried out in the laboratory of Professor Basolo at Northwestern University is recorded here as selected scientific publications. The book is divided into three different major research areas, each dealing with some aspect of coordination chemistry. In each case, introductory remarks are presented which indicate what prompted the research projects and what the major accomplishments were. Although the research was of the academic, curiosity-driven type, some aspects have proven to be useful to others involved in projects that were much more applied in nature.