Apparently, this book is a hastily prepared version of the author’s doctoral thesis, with all of the faults usually encountered in this all-too-common type of work.

Concurrent constraint programming is discussed in the context of the language OZ, developed at the Programming Systems Lab in Saarbrücken. OZ is yet another example of an object-oriented programming language, for which the author claims advantages in thread manipulation. On the basis of the tables on pages 112–113, it is hard to see why a language whose efficiency is from 3 to 20 times less than that of C++ should merit other than academic interest.

This is a book for advanced workers in the field and should be useful as a reference. It has a good index, and individual chapters are well supplied with reference material.