Book excerpt: Pairing-based cryptography is at the very leading edge of the current wave in computer cryptography. That makes this book all the more relevant, being as it is the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Pairing-Based Cryptography, Pairing 2007, held in Tokyo, Japan in 2007. The 18 revised full papers presented together were carefully reviewed and selected from 86 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections including those on applications, and certificateless public key encryption.