Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive two-volume set of books devoted to the hydrodynamics of high-performance marine vessels. These vessels may also be generally referred to as high-speed or advanced marine craft. Types of craft addressed include monohulls, catamarans, trimarans and other multihull vessels, air-cushion vehicles, surface-effect ships and planing craft. The hydrodynamic aspects dealt with are the steady-state resistance, wave generation, sinkage and trim, unsteady effects and motions in waves. Separate chapters are devoted to viscous resistance, transom sterns and the behavior of skirts for air-cushion vehicles and seals for surface-effect ships. Effects of the finite depth of the water and the possible lateral restriction on the width of the waterway feature prominently in the books. In each case, the presentation includes a full analytical development of the theory accompanied by a comparison of the theoretical predictions with extensive experimental data. In the two volumes there is a total of 939 full-color Letter-size pages. The text is accompanied by 473 photographs of ships and ship models, 1202 graphs, 1294 equations and 1435 references. The work represents the author's research, consulting and professional experience in both universities and research centers spanning a period of over fifty years. The books are targeted at university-level students and specialized industry engineers in the field of naval architecture and associated areas.