This book surveys our understanding of stars which change in brightness because they pulsate. Pulsating variable stars are keys to distance scales inside and beyond the Milky Way galaxy. They test our understanding not only of stellar pulsation theory but also of stellar structure and evolution theory. Moreover, pulsating stars are important probes of the formation and evolution of our own and neighboring galaxies. Our understanding of pulsating stars has greatly increased in recent years as large-scale surveys of pulsating stars in the Milky Way and other Local Group galaxies have provided a wealth of new observations and as space-based instruments have studied particular pulsating stars in unprecedented detail.

Annotation Papers from an August 1999 meeting are arranged in sections on the present and future of large-scale surveys, variability of high- luminosity stars, cepheids and RR Lyrae stars, the Blazhko phenomenon, theoretical models of classical pulsating stars, variables close to the main sequence, and pulsating white dwarfs and subdwarfs. Specific topics include nonradial modes in RR Lyrae stars, nonlinear pulsations of convective stellar models, oscillation of rapidly rotating stars, and instabilities in very massive stars. Szabados is affiliated with Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary. Kurtz is affiliated with the department of astronomy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)