This is my favourite book on the Chinese language. It's both interesting and immensely useful.
It's a general survey of modern Chinese characters, taking in history, composition and organisation of characters, writing styles, regional differences, simplification, romanisation methods, computerisation, and other aspects. The writing is very lucid, the examples are extremely useful, and there are excellent tables of character frequencies and other useful data.
This book is invaluable for students of Chinese at any level. It is also fascinating for a general reader. It will inspire beginners to continue studying Chinese and reassure them that the task of mastering Chinese characters is not an impossible one.