This work is a massive and near encyclopedic attempt to present a vast amount of accumulated knowledge on the principles and practice of modern control system engineering. This second edition--previously published in 1996 as a single volume [1]--has been greatly expanded to three separate and oversized volumes. One may question whether such a large work is appropriate or useful in today’s information universe, given that this subject domain is already loaded with textbooks, periodicals, conference proceedings, and other forums that serve to provide both basic and state-of-the-art information to students and practitioners. Nevertheless, one has to pay due respect to the publisher’s assertion: “The new edition not only stands as a record of accomplishment in control engineering but provides researchers with the means to make further advances.”

Toward this end, and in keeping with an encyclopedic approach, this handbook presents 129 individual papers by many different authors--there are over 200 individual contributors. Each of the three volumes can mostly stand alone. Some of these papers are from the previous edition, some are original to this edition, and some are from other publications.

Volume 1, “Control System Fundamentals,” consisting of 19 papers, is fairly basic but relatively comprehensive in scope. While the mathematical foundations and models necessary to control engineering have changed little from what was provided in the previous edition, there is a notably greater emphasis on sampling and discretization since most modern control systems are implemented digitally.

Volume 2, “Control System Applications,” consisting of 34 papers organized into seven sections, addresses a variety of application domains, including automotive, aerospace, biological and medical, and networks. There is much overlap between these seemingly disparate domain discussions since most control applications are interdisciplinary in nature with analytic foundations not particularly unique to any one special application domain. This reality becomes particularly apparent when the editor attempts to address this issue in the last section titled “Special Applications.” “Miscellaneous” would have been a more correct title as it includes several difficult-to-categorize papers. Perhaps the next edition’s organization will focus on the ubiquitous nature of control systems design and implementation applications.

Volume 3, “Control System Advanced Methods,” consists of 76 papers organized into 12 sections. Compared with the other two volumes, the papers here are closer to the many recent advances in control engineering. The very nature of such continuing advances is of course the basis for most contemporary control systems publications and conference proceedings; it also tends to quickly outdate an encyclopedic handbook’s attempt to stay relevant. That said, this volume presents numerous recent developments in design and analysis methods for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) linear systems, linear time-invariant systems, nonlinear systems, Kalman filters and observers, hybrid systems, and networks and networked controls. The last two topics are of increasing importance in applied control system theory and practice, and are new to this edition.

Overall, this work makes a reasonable attempt to span a vast field of knowledge. However, there are several intrinsic shortcomings with this handbook as a whole: the individual contributions mostly stand alone, with few cross-references; the papers exhibit some redundancy and overlap, especially in their introductory sections; there is some inconsistency in terminology and symbology across the papers; each paper has its own list of references; and there is no index, glossary, or list of acronyms. Most importantly, there is no attempt to provide a context for or overview of these separate contributions, which would have helped guide readers. Practicing professionals can mostly tolerate such shortcomings, but they would seem unacceptable to students or those entering the control systems design and implementation field. It is thus difficult to recommend purchasing these weighty tomes, except as an addition to a larger reference library or academic bookshelf.