This is one of the major works in the field of bilingualism. The volume includes 31 chapters written by 40 scholars, plus an introduction and an index. The volume aims at providing “state of the art treatments of the central issues that arise in consideration of the phenomena of bilingualism…” (inside book cover), a field that is of growing interest in applied linguistics and other disciplines.

The editors make a remark in the introduction about the use of the word bilingualism in the title of the book and say that they do not exclude additional languages and that the chapters in the book include the “full range of multilingualism.” However, the use of the term bilingualism is problematic because the Latin prefix bi means “two” and, in fact, most chapters in the book deal only with two languages.

The volume has a general introduction written by the editors and is divided into four parts: (a) Overview and Foundations; (b) Neurological and Psychological Aspects of Bilingualism; (c) Societal Bilingualism and Its Effects; and (d) Global Perspectives and Challenges: Case Studies. Each of these parts is preceded by an introduction by one of the editors.

Part 1 is the shortest of the book and contains two chapters dealing with theoretical aspects such as the concept of being bilingual, issues related to acquiring bilingual competence, and its effects. This part also discusses methodological aspects of studying bilingualism. These two chapters deal with central issues in the study of bilingualism and are more general than other chapters in the book but are necessarily limited to the discussion of some and not all the issues included in the volume.

Part 2 includes 12 chapters that are grouped into five sections and deal with a large range of issues such as bilingual aphasia, early bilingualism, comprehension and production, code mixing, sign language, and cognitive and social psychological factors. The sections and distribution of the chapters in this part of the book are not balanced in all cases. The section on neurology only includes the chapter on aphasia, and given the multidisciplinarity approach of this book and the recent developments in neuroscience, a specific chapter on its contribution to the study of bilingualism would have been welcome. The different issues in the study of bilingualism are related to each other, and it is not always easy to group different chapters under one heading; thus, a different distribution of the chapters is also possible. This is the case with some of the chapters included in two of the sections in Part 2. For example, the chapter on two linguistic systems in contact could go in the section on code mixing or the chapter on bilingual accommodation could have been included in Part 3 because of its social perspective.

Part 3 analyzes bilingualism from a social perspective and includes eight chapters grouped into two sections: one dealing with language contact and maintenance and the other with bilingualism and the media, education, and literacy. Four of the five chapters in the first section approach the study of minority languages from different perspectives, and the fifth chapter in this section, which focuses on a very interesting approach to bilingualism and gender, is not closely related to the other chapters in the same section.

Part 4 contains nine chapters that discuss the situation of bilingualism in different parts of the world. The chapters are really interesting not only because of their good quality but also because the editors have included situations in different areas of Asia and Africa. This part of the book cannot cover all of the situations involving bilingualism in the world, but it gives a very good overview of the variety and complexity of bilingualism in a large number of communities.

Even though not all areas of bilingualism are equally developed in this book, and the inclusion of the different chapters in the sections can be, in some cases, controversial, this volume is an updated review of research on many of the phenomena and situations related to bilingualism. More cross-references between the different chapters could have been useful to give more unity to the volume. Another point that could be improved is the index, which includes some but not all the authors mentioned in the chapters.

In spite of these minor editorial problems, this volume is a major contribution to the study of bilingualism and the quality of its chapters is, in general terms, excellent. It certainly achieves the goal of providing a state-of-the-art perspective on different areas of bilingualism and a multidisciplinary perspective of the broad phenomena of multilingualism.