This book is an excellent introduction for mathematicians and physicists to the subjects of simulated annealing and Boltzmann machines. Furthermore, the discussion of Boltzmann machines provides a rigorous foundation with which to penetrate the very trendy subjects of "neural computing" and "neural networks." The book is divided into two sections, the first concentrating on the simulated annealing algorithm and the second on aspects of Boltzmann machines, especially those pertaining to parallel and neural computation.