This is the only book with which I am familiarthat attempts to cover both fluids and plasmas.It is true that these subjects are closely related, but the logic of attempting to surveyboth fields, each of which is very broad,in a single volume is not really clear.References between the two subjects are not sofrequent and there are excellent readily available texts in fluid mechanics.I would have preferred to see a moreextensive coverage of the plasma physics of interest and usefulness to astrophysicalstudents.The book is well written, coveringquite a large number of topics ina clear and pleasant style which makes enjoyable reading. It familiarizes the student with a considerable number of interestingand important subjects. The student whoreads this book will successfully gain avery good understanding of many, often referred to, astrophysical topics such as accretion discs,dynamos, astrophysical jets and magnetic reconnection.As is clear from the title, the author first treats fluids or neutral gasesin this broad survey. He starts from themicroscopic point of view, deriving the Boltzmann equation and the H theorem. He then arrives at the ideal and Navier-Stokesfluid equations in a systematic mannerby expanding in the small mean free path,a technique also applied in plasma physics.He then discusses the basic propertiesof fluids that every physics student should know, such as Bernoulli's law, the conservation of circulation, the steepening of waves to form shocks and the jump conditionsin a shock. He intersperses his derivations of these relationswith helpful illustrations, such as aerodynamic liftand supernova blast waves. He then takes up convection in a compressible medium,and Raleigh-Bernard convection in sufficientdetail to give the reader a sound appreciation of these important phenomena. At the end of thefluid section of the book he presentsKolmogoroff turbulence, and in a veryuseful chapter the physics of fluids in rotating systems. I found this last chaptervery helpful, as well as entertaining.The first part of the book isvaluable, helping students to find their way throughmore formal fluid dynamics texts such as thoseof Landau and Lifshitz, Lamb and even Shu.On the other hand, the second part of thebook, on the more complicated field ofplasmas, is actually shorter than the firstpart, 183 pages versus 200 pages devoted to fluids, and is not sowell balanced.In this part the author first treatsthe orbits of individual particles (Chapter 10).He then turns to collections of particles, starting with the rather difficult BBGKYformalism. This is in line with his goal ofdeveloping each subject from basic principles.However, only the Vlasov equation emergesfrom this chapter, and there is no really deep explanation of the more basic kinetic theory being presented. The author then presents the collisionless theory of plasma waves, including Landau damping. He does not go intoLandau damping in any great physical detail,contenting himself with describing how onemust modify the velocity contour to surround any poles, referring the student toother texts for the true explanation.Only a hazy idea of the significance of this process is given.Chapter 14 concerns magnetohydrodynamics, and again the treatment is sketchy, but somequite interesting examples of magnetohydrodynamics in astrophysicsare provided. Chapter 15 takes up magnetic reconnection and Taylor relaxation, while Chapter 16 sketches classical dynamo theory giving the famous Cowling theorem to motivate this theory.Chapter 17 is an epilogue, which touches on a number of topics not covered earlier.In summary, the author is quite successfulin bringing many interesting and importantplasma astrophysical phenomena to theattention of students, but only in a semiquantitative way.Thus, the more able graduate student cannotreally master the subject from this textwithout also supplementing it with more technicalbooks such as those of Shu, Krall and Trivelpiece and Montgomery and Tidman. In this sense the plasma physics section is more appropriate to an undergraduate course than to a graduate course as the author recommends.Furthermore, there are a number of quiteimportant topics not covered in the book thatare essential to any really basic understanding ofplasma astrophysics. Examples of such topics are:the fact that thermal conductivity is stronglysuppressed across even a weak magnetic field,the interaction caused by plasma instabilities of energetic particles, suchas cosmic rays, with the background plasma, the buildup of a small scale magnetic field in turbulence by field line stretching, the Biermann battery mechanism, the Braginskiequations for a two fluid plasma with transport coefficients,runaway electrons and the shock acceleration of cosmic rays.It is true there is an attempt to cover some of these topics through the excellentsets of problems for the student at the end of eachchapter. However, I am not sure that thestudent will be able to gain any realunderstanding in this way, or even be able tosolve some of them.In summary, the author has done a really excellent job in qualitativelyimparting knowledge ofan impressive number of phenomena tothe student in an effective and pleasant manner. However, because of the self-imposed constraint to cover two large topics, fluids and plasmas, he has not succeeded in rigorously training the student in the practice ofplasma astrophysics.