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Rating: 
Summary: Good intro to agent sims.
Review: Granted, this is not a cookbook for creating the simulations described. However, it gives a good picture of the power of agent simulations, and shows the basics of behavior modeling. In this respect, it is an excellent text. I would suggest it for an advanced undergrad course, rather than graduate level.
Rating: 
Summary: The Future of Modeling Social Systems
Review: The authors do an impressive job of demonstrating how agent based simulations can be applied to social systems. In the past, modeling of this sort was limited to traditional analysis techniques such as applied differential equations. While some are critical of this work because they point out the number of assumptions inherent in this model, they also neglect to consider the greater degree of assumptions and over-simplifications implicit in pure mathematical models (eg, linearity, continuous functions, etc.) An advantage of agent based modeling is that one can consider all sorts of rules which do not lend themselves to purely mathematical models. Consider queuing theory as an example. While there exist basic mathematical models for queue analysis, once a certain threshold of complexity is reached, these models fail, and one must look to computer simulation as the alternative. While their results are speculative, the authors have successfully demonstrated emergence of complex behavior from simple rules. One such example is an unexpected diagonal migration path emerging from an orthogonal movement rule.
In the future, this type of social modeling will be the accepted norm and practitioners will look back at this work as a foundational reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Good simulation, poor basis, riddled with errors
Review: The following is from the Sept 1997 issue of "Doctor Dobbs Journal", also available at the Electronic Review of Computer Books (www.ercb.com/ddj/1997/ddj.9709.html):
Cellular automata can indeed generate complex behavior; the problem is, how do you determine what, if anything, that behavior means? A pendulum is billions of simple entities (atoms) interacting through simple rules (electromagnetic forces and gravity); does that mean that the swinging motion of a pendulum tells us something profound about the economic cycle of capitalist economies? By changing the parameters in the authors' "Sugarscape" worldlet, you can get its little agents to migrate, to trade, and so on. But what the authors don't report is how many combinations of parameters they tried that didn't produce behavior that could be given an intriguing label...in short, all the things you would need to know to judge for yourself how significant their results really are.
..."Growing Artificial Societies" is an example of "cargo-cult science." Its authors enact the rituals of science without seeming to understand the reasons for those rituals
Rating:
Summary: Good intro to agent sims.
Review: This book is an opportunity missed. The subject is interesting (and contrary to the views of another reviewer, I think there is valuable research being done here).The model seems to be well thought out, although its very limited scope (a 50 by 50 playing field) makes me almost sure the results can have little meaning. I was continuously troubled by the fact that they described their world as a torus (wrap-around like a doughnut) but none of the illustrations supported this. I didn't buy the version with the CD-ROM, but frankly, I'm glad I saved my money. Moreover, at almost every paragraph, I felt the authors had contrived the result they desired. For a much more stimulating read, try "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams : Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds" by Mitchel Resnick,
Rating:
Summary: An enormous disappointment
Review: This book is an opportunity missed. The subject is interesting (and contrary to the views of another reviewer, I think there is valuable research being done here). The model seems to be well thought out, although its very limited scope (a 50 by 50 playing field) makes me almost sure the results can have little meaning. I was continuously troubled by the fact that they described their world as a torus (wrap-around like a doughnut) but none of the illustrations supported this. I didn't buy the version with the CD-ROM, but frankly, I'm glad I saved my money. Moreover, at almost every paragraph, I felt the authors had contrived the result they desired. For a much more stimulating read, try "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams : Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds" by Mitchel Resnick,
Rating:
Summary: Good simulation, poor basis, riddled with errors
Review: This book was part of a graduate research class I was in. We built thier simulation from the ground up, but found many errors and simulation artifacts with in the book. Though the simulation was a very good one, they left or ignored key details, and the book only discusses the conceptual model. Building the model from the information in the book can be an exercise in futility. They do not give much detail, and what they do give, they hide within footnotes and seperate critical information with pages of analysis. The alanysis unfortunately doesn't talk about model deficiencies and other simulation artifacts the modelers introduced. In the end, an excellent simulation, regardless of how they put it together, and the errors their model injected into it.
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