The author’s stated objective is to provide a balanced presentation of discrete event simulation theories and principles on the one hand, and practical examples of their use on the other, while noting that most simulation texts treat examples as secondary, supporting material. The book’s organization reflects this objective. Part 1 presents a selected theory of simulation, and Part 2 contains 15 examples and their programmed solutions. These programs are constructed using a library of simulation support routines, the Simulation Subroutine Set (SSS), coded in C and included on a diskette accompanying the book. Part 3 serves as a programmer’s reference manual for these simulation support routines.

The author defines the book’s audience broadly, stating in the preface that “you can use this book as a general introduction to simulation (Part I), as a cookbook (Part II), as a toolbox (Part III and the SSS source code on the accompanying diskette), or as any combination thereof. This book can also serve as a textbook for a discrete simulation seminar or class.” The ability of the book to completely satisfy any of these roles is unclear, however.

Part 1 consists of 5 chapters that ostensibly address the theory of discrete event simulation (DES). Chapter 1 introduces the notion of DES but does not place it within a broader taxonomy of models. Chapter 2, “Modeling Random Phenomena,” reviews the basic statistical concepts of random variables, Bernoulli trials, and independence, then discusses random number generators and tests for randomness. Chapter 3 covers statistical distributions--binomial, normal, uniform, log-normal, Poisson, exponential, Gamma, Weibull, beta, and triangular--and the theory of goodness of fit. Chapter 4, “Modelling Processes,” introduces the concepts of discrete and continuous state as well as the notion of an event, which is described as “an occurrence that may directly or indirectly change present or future states.” Terminating and nonterminating simulations are introduced, and the impact of the transient phase on nonterminating simulations is reviewed. Methods for simulation output analysis form the basis of chapter 5, “Statistical Techniques.”

Part 1 is apparently oriented toward the statistical foundations of simulation. These foundations are unquestionably important, but as a “general introduction to simulation,” they are insufficient. Notably absent is coverage of several important concepts in modeling methodology, including DES conceptual frameworks, time-flow mechanisms, and the broader simulation life cycle. A brief review of such processes as problem formulation, definition of objectives, and model specification and analysis would seem warranted in an introductory text.

The examples in Part 2 are useful, and the accompanying text provides valuable insights regarding model development. Unfortunately, the SSS routines used throughout the book force solutions to appear quite cryptic. Conceived to allow invocation from languages such as FORTRAN and BASIC, the routines in SSS use all-uppercase keywords with a maximum length of six characters. Code readability suffers greatly from this limitation. Perhaps more detrimental to the usefulness of SSS is the way in which the event scheduling (ES) world view is realized. Entities have no explicit declaration; they are represented implicitly (at least in the examples provided), and attributes, whose values must be represented by floating point numbers, are accessible only by functions that operate on their index. It is difficult to scan the SSS source and identify the entities and attributes in the model.

Pollatschek provides an interesting perspective on discrete event simulation, particularly with respect to the statistical aspects of simulation model development and use. The book stresses the practical application of simulation theory, and in this regard it is unusual. Unfortunately, much of the benefit of these examples is lost within the contrivances imposed by the SSS syntax and the implementation scheme adopted in the text. However, this text may prove useful as a companion volume to more mainstream texts such as Banks et al. [1] and Law and Kelton [2].