There have been many books written on system identification such as those by Ljung and by Sage and Melsa. Many of the classic works consider the simple problem of finding the parameter "a" which is embedded in the differential equation dx/dt=ax+bu for example. One measures y=ex+w foe example and is asked to determine "a". Simple, but frustrating at times. The classic, at least now classic, approach is to use a Kalman or extended Kalman filter.This book addresses this problem in detail. Yet it delays until the last portion of the book the now classic methods and in the first sections it rambles failing to provided any sense of structure. The author clearly understands the topic but he consistently fails to convey the message. He introduces examples which could be excellent opportunities to develop the theory but after the introductions he just leaves the reader flat.The book lacks structure, detail, motivation, and on and on. He refers to my own text of almost 40 years ago now and yet even there and then we had introduced the modern view of identification. I hope Dover can reintroduce some of the better texts since this topic is current in many fields especially genomics which consider active secondary pathways and epigentic dynamics