While hydrodynamic turbulence has been a major subject ofphysical research for more than a century, turbulence in plasmasis unusual in daily life or even laboratory conditions, and itsrelevance only became apparent with the development of astrophysics.For macroscopic processes, the magnetohydrodynamic description is usually adequate,and its application to realistic phenomena started with the workof Batchelor in 1950 on the dynamo problem. Solar flares,the solar wind, the geodynamo and stellar accretion disks, to nameonly a few, were added later to the list of phenomena amenable to a MHD description:naturally the literature on such a vast subject is immense, butso far there was not a reference book providing an up-to-dateaccount of the main concepts and results. The monograph by DieterBiskamp is well suited to fill this void. The MHD equations are similarin many ways to the Navier-Stokes ones, and the parallelismextends to several key concepts in the understanding of turbulence,such as self-organization, cascades and closure methods. Perhapsthe strongest part of the book from a didactic viewpoint is the waythis parallelism is exploited to highlight the similaritiesand differences with hydrodynamic turbulence, and the formthat key phenomena exclusive of MHD, such as the Alfvén effector flow anisotropy, modify the classical results.After a clear and concise introduction to the basic MHD equations, idealinvariants and linear waves, the book describes some classicalinstabilities leading to turbulence, such as the Kelvin--Helmholtzinstability. This is followed by the statistical theory of incompressibleturbulence. As the author asserts, the dynamical systems approachpioneered in the nineteen eighties has failed to produce new physicalinsights, not because of any intrinsic flaw, but because of the largenumber of degrees of freedom (in mathematical parlance, essentially the dimension of the attractor) present in turbulent fluids and plasmas. We must therefore handle three essential methods: phenomenological scalingarguments in the spirit of Kolmogorov's K41 theory; closure theories,obtained by truncating at some point the hierarchy of moment equations; and to verifythe plausibility of these approaches, numerical simulations of theoriginal dynamic equations. Biskamp is a master of numerics and thebook is well-illustrated with graphics pointing out the strengths andshortcomings of these theories. The key role of two specific MHDinvariants (the magnetic helicity and the cross-helicity) in thecascades direction is very clearly explained, as well as the rangesof applicability of the Kolmogorov and the Iroshnikov-Kraichnanstatistics, about which there was some polemic until recently.Compressible turbulence and turbulent convection is tackled next,and the monograph ends with studies of three specific astrophysicaltopics: the solar wind, accretion disks and interstellar turbulence.Here the text becomes of necessity more descriptive and empirical,as the complexity of the phenomena grows in inverse proportion toour detailed knowledge of them. Nevertheless some of the more amenableprocesses, such as the instabilities of certain geometries, arereasonably detailed and on the whole one gets the feeling of understandingthe basics of the problems.Few criticisms can be levelled at this monograph, and most of themare answered by the need to keep its length within bounds. Thus,turbulent dynamos and turbulent reconnection are almost entirely omitted,and other subjects, such as mean-field electrodynamics and decay laws,are more controversial than the author admits.Also, while Biskamp is probably right in being skeptical about derivingmuch knowledge on intermittency from the dynamic equations alone, someuseful estimates on scaling exponents have been rigorously proved,beginning with the work of Constantin and Fefferman (1994). Thiscertainly does not detract from the excellent global impressionobtained from this book, which undoubtedly belongs on the shelves ofevery student of MHD turbulence.M Núñez