This interesting book deals with the theory of convex and starlike
biholomorphic mappings in several complex variables. The underly- ing
theme is the extension to several complex variables of geometric aspects
of the classical theory of univalent functions. Because the author's
introduction provides an excellent overview of the content of the book,
I will not duplicate the effort here. Rather, I will place the book into
historical context. The theory of univalent functions long has been an
important part of the study of holomorphic functions of one complex
variable. The roots of the subject go back to the famous Riemann Mapping
Theorem which asserts that a simply connected region n which is a proper
subset of the complex plane C is biholomorphically equivalent to the
open unit disk . That is, there is a univalent function (holo- morphic
bijection) I: -+ n. In the early part of this century work began to
focus on the class S of normalized (f (0) = 0 and I' (0) = 1) univalent
functions defined on the unit disk. The restriction to uni- valent
functions defined on the unit disk is justified by the Riemann Mapping
Theorem. The subject contains many beautiful results that were obtained
by fundamental techniques developed by many mathe- maticians, including
Koebe, Bieberbach, Loewner, Goluzin, Grunsky, and Schiffer. The
best-known aspect of univalent function theory is the so-called
Bieberbach conjecture which was proved by de Branges in 1984.