Michael Howe has written several books covering the field of aeroacoustics. This book, Acoustics and Aerodynamic Sound, is intended as a ‘short, one-semester introduction’ to the subject for undergraduate and graduate scholars, and, accordingly, it concentrates on fundamental concepts and analytical solutions to simple problems.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to acoustics, including the wave equation and various types of acoustic source. Chapter 2 introduces Kirchoff's formula and goes on to derive compact Green's functions for bodies of various shapes. Chapter 3 deals with radiation of sound from a baffled piston and diffraction by edges and apertures. Sound produced aerodynamically is considered in Chapter 4, starting with Lighthill's theory of aerodynamic sound and then extending it to look at interactions between vortexes and surfaces. Finally, Chapter 5 considers propagation of sound in and from ducts and apertures. Example problems are given with each chapter and solutions are provided with some of these to facilitate self-study. A useful bibliography is provided and an index is included.

The book is clearly and concisely written and certainly achieves its objective of being a useful text to accompany an academic course. Practicing engineers and others seeking a more complete reference work would, perhaps, be better advised to seek out a copy of Acoustics of Fluid-Structure Interactions (Cambridge University Press, 1998) by the same author.