Book excerpt: The fruit of a conference that gathered seven very active researchers in the field, Combinatorial Design and their Applications presents a wide but representative range of topics on the non-geometrical aspects of design theory. By concentrating on a few important areas, the authors succeed in providing greater detail in these areas in a more complete and accessible form. Through their contributions to this collection, they help fill a gap in the available combinatorics literature. The papers included in this volume cover recent developments in areas of current interest, such as difference sets, cryptography, and optimal linear codes. Researchers in combinatorics and other areas of pure mathematics, along with researchers in statistics and computer design will find in-depth, up-to-date discussions of design theory and the application of the theory to statistical design, codes, and cryptography.