  We investigate phase transitions and critical phenomena in Kerr-Newman-Anti
de Sitter black holes in the framework of the geometry of their equilibrium
thermodynamic state space. The scalar curvature of these state space Riemannian
geometries is computed in various ensembles. The scalar curvature diverges at
the critical point of second order phase transitions for these systems.
Remarkably, however, we show that the state space scalar curvature also carries
information about the liquid-gas like first order phase transitions and the
consequent instabilities and phase coexistence for these black holes. This is
encoded in the turning point behavior and the multi-valued branched structure
of the scalar curvature in the neighborhood of these first order phase
transitions. We re-examine this first for the conventional Van der Waals
system, as a preliminary exercise. Subsequently, we study the Kerr-Newman-AdS
black holes for a grand canonical and two "mixed" ensembles and establish novel
phase structures. The state space scalar curvature bears out our assertion for
the first order phase transitions for both the known and the new phase
structures, and closely resembles the Van der Waals system.
