Book excerpt: The first edition of this book was reviewed in 1982 as "the most extensive treatment of Pade approximants actually available." This second edition has been thoroughly updated, with a substantial new chapter on multiseries approximants. Applications to statistical mechanics and critical phenomena are extensively covered, and there are newly extended sections devoted to circuit design, matrix Pade approximation, and computational methods. This succinct and straightforward treatment will appeal to scientists, engineers, and mathematicians alike.