"A subset of the chemical cosmos is the subject of Henning Hopf's superb book. It is the world of hydrocarbons, compounds of only carbon and hydrogen. It would seem that this would be a terrible constraint, C and H only. Hardly so. Already by the third page of his book a tree (or is it a dendrimer?) begins to grow, and out we rush along its branches-toward annulenes and dendralenes, to linear and cross-conjugated hydrocarbons, to fulvenes and cumulenes. In further chapters Henning Hopf decorates the dendrimer, giving a beatifully balanced and economic account of what were sometimes competing syntheses."  R. Hoffmann, Cornell University, Nachrichten aus der Chemie, 48, Dezember 2000.