This book was written by its two authors with the explicit intention that it would become one of the standard text books on evolutionary computation, to rival ”the greats”, namely those of Goldberg (1989), Davis (1991), Michalewicz (1992-1996), Koza (1992), Back (1995), and Mitchell (1996) . It aims to be a comprehensive account both in theory and in practice of the general field of ”Evolutionary Computation”. For those familiar with Goldberg’s classic text (Goldberg, 1989) and Davis’s ”how to” book (Davis, 1991), this book combines the strengths of both. It presents the theory in a clear and didactic manner that is pleasing. However if a second edition is published, I hope the authors will do a better job of editing their text. The result would make their book one of the best of its kind. I will take up this issue again at the end of this review. The real advantage of this book is that it is comprehensive, structured, and modern. It presents its material in a logical linear manner that starts with a brief overview chapter on what evolutionary computation is about, and then launches into 4 comprehensive chapters describing the basics of the 4 main paradigms or ”dialects” as the authors call them of evolutionary computation (EC), namely GAs (Genetic Algorithms, founded by John Holland in the US in the 1960s), ES (Evolutionary Strategies, founded by Rechenberg and Schwefel in Germany in the 1960s), EP (Evolutionary Programming, founded by Fogel in the US in the 1960s), and GP (Genetic Programming, founded by Koza in the US in the 1980s). The authors deliberately take a broad overview of EC, extracting the common features of all 4 paradigms, and then presenting the paradigms one by one in terms of these common themes. Earlier texts were aimed mostly at only one of the 4 paradigms, especially the classic texts of a decade or more ago. Anyone writing a text on EC today is now virtually obliged to present all paradigms, otherwise they would risk being labeled ”narrow”. It is this comprehensiveness that is one of the major advantages of the book. The only other text aimed similarly to be comprehensive in the above sense is that of Back (1995). Chapters 3 to 6 present the theory of the 4 paradigms spending about 10-20 pages on each, followed by several exercises at the end of each chapter for readers and students to test their understanding. Unfortunately, there are no answers to these exercises at the end of the book, which is another major disadvantage of the book that aims to