Distributed Computing : Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics

Rating:
Summary: well-written, in-depth overview of distributed computing
Review: I used this book for teaching an under-graduate primer course in distributed computing. The book is readable, coherent, well-structured and very efficient as a textbook. It strikes a good balance between the sea of details and the basic principles. I am familiar with the core of this book since it was a collection of lecture notes (alas, no longer available). It's a pity that some important topics have been omitted from the book version (e.g., Gallager, Humblett, Spira alg). There are some minor errors and imperfections in pseudocodes and exercise definitions which are a little bit annoying. That's why I'm giving this book four points and not five. Bottom line: I would recommend this book as a course textbook.

Rating:
Summary: Terse prose fraught with errors and omissions
Review: I've struggled to read this text, since it contains many very recent results distilled into intelligently organized chapters. Unfortunately, even though this book is intended for a savvy audience, the text is often too detailed and technical, while important "big picture" intuition is never relayed. Frequent errors in the algorithms and proofs, ranging from simple subscript swaps to more subtle errors in logic to the (rarer) complete lack of logic make this a difficult book to recommend. In addition, the exercises are frequently too vague (sometimes meaningless) -- this book is definitely not recommended for class work.