While computers spat out reports that the US was winning the war in Vietnam, soldiers on the front lines had an entirely different impression. The results of that situation led to a quick about-face, but the habit of looking at land combat from the top down remained the same. Here, Ilachinski (Center for Naval Analysis, USA) examines the next generation of computer analysis and projection of war. EINSTein, which stands for Enhanced (Irreducible Semi-Autonomous Adaptive Combat) Neural Simulation Toolkit, is a system that starts from the bottom up and uses nonlinear logic and theories of complexity and chaos to describe conventional land battles. Ilachinski, who is intimately involved with EINSTein's development, believes that multi-agent approaches such as this will reduce the possibility of analysis and projections that reflect wars as their authors want them to be; systems like EINSTein will tell the truth about what he calls the "terrible, brutal, bloody phenomenon that exists in the real world." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)