P E Hodgson Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971 pp xii + 661 price £14.50 This comprehensive work, some six hundred and sixty pages in length, covers in detail several ways in which nuclear reactions have been used to probe the structure of the nucleus. It is perhaps not unexpected that the optical model should figure largely in Dr Hodgson's treatment of the subject and that the theory behind this model should receive more detailed attention than perhaps is warranted in a book with such a general title.