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Rating: 
Summary: too breif, it assumes too much
Review: if you already know these topics this might be a good book, but for those of us first learning it, this book is terrible, way to breif, and it assumes you know way more than you really do
Rating: 
Summary: Quite good, too brief, and inconsistent
Review: This book confuses between syntax and semantics since the beginning, like separating the literals from its values. No special notations were used to differentiate them. This is a crucial issue that the author should address in a topic like this. Also, some other notations he used is quite confusing, like showing the premises and conclusions.The author seemed to assume that you have ALL the necessary prerequisites as he explained the background materials in a first few chapters (i.e. set theory, operational semantics, inductions, inductive definitions) very briefly. The style the author used in introduction is to put two or three paragraphs of texts and put some formulas then give exercises. Which is, for me, quite frustrating. I have no clue at all in doing some of the exercises. Note that I have quite a background in math & Computer science and I am an M.S. student currently. In the whole text, he often skipped intermediate steps (in proofs and definitions) and hoping you understand the whole story. It's OK if it's clear enough. However, for some important cases, he leaved out crucial details like that! However, he did quite a good job in explaining denotational and axiomatic semantics of the toy language he used, IMP. Again, he does not differentiate syntax and semantics. The context is clearer, however. The rest of the book includes: Completeness of Hoare rules, ok but you have to know the background material first: Godel INcompleteness theorem Intro to domain theory OK, but he assume some backgrounds too. Very necessary intro for reading the rest of the book. You may want to have another book explain it, though. Recursive stuffs (equations, techniques & types) He did best here, discussed in details in 3 chapters. Language with higher types Very detail and clear Info systems Quite good. Scott domain is quite well explained. Non determinism and parallelism About guarded commands, communicating processes, Milner CCS, pure CCS and local model checking. To summarize, the book is for you if: you have a very strong background in math & comsci and have already taken some introductory semantic courses.
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