This book presents the standard material on the optical model of the nucleus in a clear and easily comprehensible fashion. The authors took great pains in this regard: each chapter begins with some very general introductory material which brings the rest of the chapter into perspective. This takes up, altogether, about one-third of the material.
The book itself must have been written some years ago as there are no references to articles after 1961 and only very few to articles after 1959. It is a good book; it is not an inspired book and the material presented shows the mark of having been learned rather than reinvented. It also shows the mark of having been written by theoreticians: the calculations, however trivial, are always carefully referenced, whereas the experimental data have usually been "obtained by experiment". Also undeniably, a certain carelessness, of both text and translation, pervades the book. Nevertheless, it ~Sll probably be very useful in its country of origin, for which undoubtedly it was originally intended, and there is a good deal of material which a student in any country may as well learn from the present volume. EUGENE P. WIGNER