Prof. Barlow has distilled his knowledge and 25+ years of teaching experience into 190 pages. The text presents the theory very concisely without sacrificing rigor. All the terminology is carefully defined and the meanings are made clear through examples. The examples appear to be drawn from what has been successful in the classroom, and are much more useful than the examples given in early works in this field. The book is divided into three parts, plus a 6 page Introduction to the history and background of the subject. The first part covers Failure Data Analysis. This part defines the terms used later, and develops the mathematics needed in a very intuitive way. The second part covers the Economics of Maintenance Decisions in eleven pages! The third part covers System Reliability. Individual chapters cover Network Reliability, System Failure Analysis, Availability and Maintainability, Influence Diagrams, and Making Decisions Using Influence Diagrams. The book gives very practical, useful information, reflecting its engineering origins. It is the kind of book you will go back to often.