The authors’ purpose is to introduce the concept of programming concurrent lightweight processes using the Windows NT thread interface. Many well-known operating systems concepts are explained. Programming examples for some problems are given, including producer-consumer, bounded buffer, reader-writer, dining philosophers, a credit account, a game, quicksort, search tree, string match, sieve of  Eratosthenes  for prime numbers, and maintenance of a phone directory.

Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 presents some aspects of the Windows NT thread interface, namely processes and threads, states, thread management operations, context switches, priorities, scheduling, and synchronization objects. Chapter 3 discusses synchronization with mutexes, critical sections, semaphores, and events. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss monitors. Chapter 6 covers system deadlocks and how they are handled with detection and recovery, prevention, or avoidance. In chapter 7, operating structures and different kinds of threads are sketched. Some programming models are compared in chapter 8, which discusses how concurrent programs can be organized through the various concepts of workgroup, WorkCrew, manager-worker, deferred computation, and pipeline. Chapter 9 explores the use of threads in a distributed application with client and server. The chapters include bibliographic notes, exercises, and references. An appendix presents a WorkCrew implementation, and there is an index.

The operating systems concepts that are important for concurrent application programming are described clearly. However, many of the identifiers, data types, and functions from the Windows NT interface (such as Microsoft Foundation Classes, or MFCs) that are used in the programs are explained too briefly or, mostly, not at all. Therefore, the book is useful only for those readers who know these things and who have a Windows NT reference at their disposal. In this respect, the book is too short. The authors should have mentioned this essential prerequisite in the preface, where they state that readers need only a working knowledge of C and a cursory knowledge of C++.

I recommend this book only for applications programmers who want to learn concurrent programming with Windows NT threads and who know Windows NT interfaces.