(Cont.) to the XPS in SNR RCW 103. The multiple IR band measurements of 1E 1048.1-5937 provide marginal evidence for spectral flattening, and cannot rule out an accretion disk scenario for AXPs.

The first comprehensive and up-to-date review of our new understanding of accretion disks around black holes - with chapters from experts from around the world.

What evidence is there for and against unified schemes for active galactic nuclei (AGN)? How do the AGN populations evolve over cosmological timescales? And what can the variability of their UV and X-ray emission tell us? These are just some of the exciting issues addressed in this volume of papers collected from the 33rd Herstmonceux conference in Cambridge. AGN are among the most spectacular objects known to astronomy. Yet, despite years of intense and wide-ranging research, the debate continues - what is their fundamental source of power? Rapid progress has been made towards answering this question by a variety of large-scale, multi-wavelength monitoring campaigns and the latest generation of satellite-borne observations. This volume provides a valuable overview and timely update of the exciting and rapidly developing field of AGN research - essential reading for graduate students and researchers.

The discovery of the ?rst case of superluminal radio jets in our galaxy in 1994 from the bright and peculiar X-ray source GRS 1915+105 has opened the way to a major shift in the direction of studies of stellar-mass accreting binaries. The past decade has seen an impressive increase in multi-wavelength studies. It is now known that all black hole binaries in our galaxy are radio sources and most likely their radio emission originates from a powerful jet. In addition to the spectacular events related to the ejection of superluminal jets, steady jets are known from many systems. Compared with their supermassive cousins, the nuclei of active galaxies, stellar-mass X-ray binaries have the advantage of varying on time scales accessible within a human life (sometimes even much shorter than a second). This has led to the ?rst detailed studies of the relation between accretion and ejection. It is even possible that, excluding their “soft” periods, the majority of the power in gal- tic sources lies in the jets and not in the accretion ?ows. This means that until a few years ago we were struggling with a physical problem, accretion onto compact objects, without considering one of the most important components of the system. Models that associate part of the high-energy emission and even the fast aperiodic variability to the jet itself are now being proposed and jets can no longer be ignored.

(Note: the title actually, but erroneously, shown on the dust jacket, cover, and title page is Multi-Wavelength Continuum Emission of AGN, which is really only the heading of the first section of the volume. Because the correct, but omitted, title subsumes the erroneous title, Book News uses it in order to most accurately establish the reach of the volume.) The proceedings, then, of IAU Symposium No. 159, held in Geneva, Switzerland, August-September 1993, contain almost all of the presentations given at the conference both as posters and as oral invited and contributed papers. They address topics in multi- wavelength continuum emission of AGN; new observations of AGN with specific instruments; variability; correlations between emission components; AGN physics and models; unified schemes and relations with other types of objects; continuum studies; emission processes; x-rays and higher energies; variability; radio emission (maps); line studies; disk structure and emission; and statistical studies and evolution. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

All papers have been peer-reviewed. These proceedings contain research papers from the participants of the astrophysics conference “Cool discs, hot flows”. The main focus of the conference was on physical processes of accreting compact objects. Topics covered include wind-fed accretion, neutron stars and white dwarfs, ultraluminous X-ray sources and temporal variability.