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Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry
by Daniel J. Jacob
Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1999. 266 pp. ISBN 0-691-00185-5. $39.50 (cloth).
reviewed by Jonathan P. D. Abbott
Daniel Jacob's new textbook, Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry, is a noteworthy addition to a growing set of atmospheric chemistry texts, filling a niche that was long vacant. While there are a number of books on the market that are used extensively in upper-level atmospheric chemistry classes, Jacob's offering is unique in presenting the big issues in a concise manner well suited to a one-semester-long course for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students.
The focus of the book is upon the development of a quantitative framework needed to understand the overall mechanisms of atmospheric chemistry. Jacob is an internationally known modeler of atmospheric chemical processes, with current research interests in the chemistry of the lower atmosphere (the "troposphere") and the atmospheric impacts of widespread industrialization. This perspective very much characterizes his book....