John James is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is the author of Student's Guide to Fourier Transforms, also published by Cambridge University Press, now in its second edition.

• 1. A brief history of spectroscopy; 2. The relevant regions of the electromagnetic spectrum; 3. Geometrical optics; 4. Optical aberrations; 5. Fourier transforms - a brief revision; 6. Physical optics and diffraction; 7. The prism spectrograph; 8. The plane grating spectrograph; 9. The concave grating spectrograph; 10. The interference spectrograph; 11. The multiplex spectrometer; 12. Detectors; 13. Auxiliary optics; 14. Optical design; 15. Mechanical design and construction; 16. Calibration; 17. The alignment of a spectrograph; Index.

'… an excellent book for reference, written in a clear style … should prove useful for anyone whose work may involve practical spectroscopy.' The Imaging Science Journal