‘This book is a veritable tour de force. Harel writes with uncommon verve, clarity and imagination.'

‘Through the use of tantalizing questions and aptly chosen and often amusing examples, the author transmits to the reader the excitement and intellectual satisfaction of computer science research. Without the use of formal mathematics and without any sacrifice of intellectual integrity, he conveys to the general reader the profound principles on which computer science is founded and which hitherto were only accessible in abstruse and esoteric textbooks and papers.'

‘This is scientific writing at its best.'

Dr Stan Scott, Queen's University Belfast. The Times Higher Education Supplement.

This book tells the story of the concepts, ideas, methods and results fundamental to computer science, in a form independent of the details of specific computers, languages and formalisms. It concerns the true 'spirit' of computers; with the 'recipes' that make them tick - their algorithms.

• Chapters on software engineering and on reactive systems.

• Thoroughly revised chapter on programming languages.

• New material on quantum and molecular computing.

• Whole text thoroughly updated to include new material on many topics, including abstract data types, the object-oriented paradigm, primality testing, and system verification and validation.

David Harel is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is renowned for outstanding research in many areas of the field, and has recently been awarded the Israel Prize in Computer Science.