The Book Review Column

1. Stable Marriage and its Relation to Other Combinatorial Problems : An Introduction to Algorithm Analysis by Donald Knuth . Reviewed by Tim McNichol. This book uses the stable marriage problem as motivation to look at some mathematics of inter est . It would be useful for undergrads ; however, for a serious study of matching there ar e more advanced and more up-to-date books available . 2. The Limits of Mathematics by Gregory J . Chaitin . Reviewed by Vladimir Tasic . This book is on algorithmic information theory and randomness as they relate to Berr y 's Paradox ("the shortest number that requires less than 1000 characters to describe it" has just bee n described by that phrase in quotes, yet that phrase was less than 1000 characters . ) 3. Privacy on the Line by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau . Reviewed by Joseph Maklevitch . This book is about the balance between the citizen's need for privacy and the government's need to intrude to prevent or solve crimes . These issues are relevant now because o f crytography and computers . The authors are respected theorists who have worked in cryptog raphy, hence their comments are worthy considering . This book has caused some controvers y in the math community— see the June-July 1998 issue of Notices of the AMS, also available at http://www.ams .org/notices . Or, better yet, read the book ! 4. A Theory of Objects by Authors : Martin Abadi and Luca Cardelli . Reviewed by Brian Postow . This book is about formalizing the semantics of object-oriented languages . To do this, a new calculus is introduced .