* Presents an original approach to the electronic structure of solids and outlines the strong ties between molecules and solids * Illustrates different concepts and main ideas with reference to real materials * Provides useful learning tool for students with different backgrounds (physics, chemistry, materials science) * Will appeal to both students and researchers willing to understand results of quantitative calculations or to rationalize experimental observations in solid state and materials science * Richly illustrated, with ample tutorial material * Solutions to the exercises provided This book provides an intuitive yet sound understanding of how structure and properties of solids may be related. The natural link is provided by the band theory approach to the electronic structure of solids. The chemically insightful concept of orbital interaction and the essential machinery of band theory are used throughout the book to build links between the crystal and electronic structure of periodic systems. In such a way, it is shown how important tools for understanding properties of solids like the density of states, the Fermi surface etc. can be qualitatively sketched and used to either understand the results of quantitative calculations or to rationalize experimental observations. Extensive use of the orbital interaction approach appears to be a very efficient way of building bridges between physically and chemically based notions to understand the structure and properties of solids. Table Of Contents 1: Elementary introduction to the transport properties of solids 2: Electronic structure of molecules: use of the symmetry 3: Electronic Structure of One-dimensional Systems: Basic Notions 4: Electronic First-order Peierls distortions in periodic 1D systems 5: Application to trans-polyacetylene 6: Handling the symmetry in 1D compounds 7: Application to polyacene 8: Electronic structure of selected inorganic chains 9: Electronic structure of 2D and 3D systems 10: Density of States 11: Fermi surface and Low Dimensional Metals 12: Electron repulsion