At the time of its original publication, this reissued 'classic' text, co-written by the Nobel Laureate of 1954, Max Born, represented the final account of the subject and in many ways it still does. The book is divided into four sections. The first of these is very general in nature and deals with the general statistical mechanics of ideal lattices, leading to the electric polarizability and to the scattering of light. The second part deals with the properties of long lattice waves; the third with thermal properties; and the fourth with optical properties.