The amount of material in this book still stuns me, as well as the<br>care that was taken in compiling it.  Its influence is still felt in<br>that many people still use its nomenclature for special functions.<br><br>Many of the comments of the other reviewers are valid.  However, one<br>should realize this book came from another era, one in which the<br>availability of digital computation resources weren't so prevalent or<br>cheap as they are today.  When one had to evaluate an expression to<br>more significant figures than available on a slide rule, the<br>calculation had to be done with logarithms and tables.  It was noxious<br>drudgery and error-prone to boot.<br><br>This book covers many, if not most, of the special functions a<br>technical person will be likely to encounter during his or her career.<br>The level of presentation is approximately at what one could expect of<br>a four year technical degree that has had exposure to the normal year<br>and a half of elementary calculus, a semester or two of advanced<br>calculus including differential equations, a semester of complex<br>variables, and possibly a numerical analysis course.  However, the<br>book can still be used profitably even if you haven't had all that<br>background.<br><br>For $25 new or $5-10 used, it's hard to get this kind of information<br>density for such low cost.  My copy is pretty beat up; it's marked at<br>$6.95 and I probably bought it in the late 1960's or early 1970's.<br><br>The NIST is working on a digital replacement of Abramowitz and Stegun.<br>Visit their website for an update.