Lisp, once a language used almost exclusively for teaching, is now available on micros and this book can help the hobbyist learning by the light of his own screen.

It teaches, not just as a language, the concept of Lisp, the ideas behind it, particularly recursion and trees, and analyses plenty of example programs. It should make you a competent Lisp programmer - though it's not easy to learn.

Gnosis is a company that sells a Lisp system (P-Lisp) to US educational establishments and, although several people worked on the book, the seams don't show.

The book was reviewed in use with a BBC running Acornsoft's Lisp. An environment disk, referred to as an accompaniment to the book but not available for review, would have saved typing time since the many brackets in Lisp programs don't match.

However, Lisp could be learned from the book without a Lisp system in front of you. It provides a better tutorial introduction to Lisp than Acornsoft's guide, but is twice the price. Although aimed at students, it reads well and could be used with any Lisp environment, once the system specific commands have been understood.

The P-Lisp system costs $80 and is available for Apple systems II, IIe and III.

Piers Letcher