This expository text falls into three clear parts. The first part, “Introduction to Mathematica,” includes material on how to get started, the numerical facilities, and the algebraic manipulation facilities; a clear description of the graphics facilities and their use; and a variety of helpful hints on using Mathematica clearly and efficiently. Given my personal interest in integration and solving differential equations, I was disappointed that these topics are relegated to a few short sections. The author gives no hint of the dangers and difficulties of the numerical approaches mentioned in the text.

The second part of the book discusses “Programming” in Mathematica. Basically it acts as a programming tutorial. It covers lists and other data types, assignments and pattern matching, functions and procedures, I/O, and, finally, packages. The discussion is lucid and informative.

The last part of the book, nearly a third of the text, is a set of ten appendices. Their content ranges from answers to exercises, to command definitions, to how to obtain information on Mathematica in electronic form. Throughout the text, icons indicate machine-specific or version-related information. Versions 1.2 and 2.0 of Mathematica are discussed, and notes address Macintosh and NeXT computers, UNIX workstations, and MS-DOS machines.