J. A. Goldsmith (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge, MA & Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Pp. xiv + 986.

To assess a book of nearly a thousand pages with thirty-two contributions is something of a tall order, if not an impossible task, if one wants to do justice to all of it. For this reason, I have chosen to approach it from my own standpoint on phonology and see to what extent the issues I see as crucial to the current vigorous debate in this area have been addressed and to examine how they have been dealt with. First, however, I will present a general description and discussion of the book as a whole.