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Full Text
Don Green, Ed.
McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, Seventh Edition, 2,240 pp., $125, indexed Many sections of the new edition of Perry's Handbook have been somewhat altered, and generally improved, although the basic book remains essentially the same. It is a monumental collection of information, richly illustrated. The major problem is the time it takes to find a particular item of information. The Handbook is poorly organized and almost devoid of cross referencing.
The general appearance of the book has been improved; the physical property tables are more readable and the size of typeface for the headings is slightly larger. This edition has about the same number of pages as the prior issue. Sixty percent of the 141 authors come from industry, about the same percentage as the 1934 First Edition. The 13-year gap between the Sixth and Seventh Editions ties the longest time span between updates.
The editor, Don Green of the University of Kansas, deserves a vote of thanks from the profession for his efforts on the new edition.
His instructions to the authors set the tone for what a handbook should be: "The readers typically want answers to specific questions or problems, or a concise introduction to a topic... To the extent that the Handbook satisfies readers' needs quickly, easily, and reliably, its success is assured... if possible information should be expressed in numerical or graphical form instead of words... Background information, general descriptive matter and explanatory text should be condensed to the smallest possible limit."
Major improvements
With 141 authors, content and style vary enormously. In my view, the major improvements to the Seventh Edition are the addition of Chapter 26 (Process Safety), the revision of Chapter 8 (Process Control), and the revision of the subsection on physical-property estimation methods in Chapter 2. The latter features an additional 12 pages and the example calculations have been increased from 13 to 41, with estimated values compared to experimental ones. This short section alone...