There aren't too many new books these days about the Fortran programming language (perhaps because there aren't many people programming in Fortran), so Mr. Browne's book won't suffer due to too much competition.

But then Mr. Browne's book and its subject matter aren't all that new either. The inside leaf reveals this book was first published in Australia in 1982 and has only just reached these shores in the form of a British version published by Interface.

Mr. Browne set himself a difficult task in attempting to write a book that could seriously deserve the title "Fortran for Human Beings" as the language in question is distinctly inhuman and unfriendly. He has responded to this challenge with a book that is short on detailed explanations of Fortran (and short in general - it's only 92 pages long), and relies instead on example program listings.

Mr. Browne explains his rationale thus: "Most Fortran texts are 'wordy'. Their intention is to fully explain all the features of Fortran and many of them do this very well. However, I believe the beginner needs a text which establishes the important features quickly, enables extensive program writing and also concentrates on programming style. This book assumes no previous knowledge of program writing."

Though reasonably readable, the text seems to have been set on a daisywheel printer. The program examples themselves are of the iteration calculation, loan-interest calculation, spherical colume determination type (no-one ever said Fortran was going to be fun!), but given the limited nature of the language this is not surprising.

If you are in the position of having to learn Fortran, then this slim volume might be a reasonable place to start - though you would need a comprehensive reference guide as a companion to it.

Geof Wheelwright