This textbook is intended for students who study chemistry independently or by correspondence. It contains over 850 problems and exercises related to various sections of general chemistry.

Each chapter begins with sufficient theoretical detail and sample solutions of typical problems which will assist the student in problem solving and in future practical applications.

After graduating from Moscow University in 1908 Nikolai Glinka did research for several years under N. D. Zelinsky. But he preferred teaching to research and took his doctorate in that field. After twelve years teaching chemistry in Podolsk he was transferred to Moscow in 1924 by the People's Commissariat of Education. In 1940 he was appointed Head of the Chair of Inorganic and General Chemistry at the All-Union Polytechnical Correspondence Institute, a post he held to the end of his life.

Prof. Glinka's first textbook Inorganic Chemistry, published in 1930, was reprinted five times. General Chemistry first appeared in 1940 and has had fourteen Russian editions. Another textbook by prof. Glinka, widely used in colleges, is Problems in General Chemistry. It has had nineteen Russian editions and has been translated into several languages.