Physicists are renowned for wandering into neighboring fields, but applying techniques of physics to economic phenomena is an unprecedented leap into the social sciences. Sinha (theoretical physics, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India), Arnab Chatterjee (condensed matter and statistical physics, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy), Anirban Chakraborti (quantitative finance, Ecole Centrale Paris, France), and Bikas K. Chakrabarti (theoretical condensed matter physics, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India) introduce the main currents of research in the field particularly for students of physics or economics but also for non-specialist scientists. They consider the random walk and beyond, understanding interactions through cross-correlations, the log-normal and extreme-value distributions, explaining complex distributions with simple models, how individuals are not gas molecules, and other matters. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)