Support Vector Machines are popular because of their high classification importance; this is the first book to focus the discussions on SVMs specifically to pattern classification.
From the reviews:
"This broad and deep ... book is organized around the highly significant concept of pattern recognition by support vector machines (SVMs). ... The book is praxis and application oriented but with strong theoretical backing and support. Many ... details are presented and discussed, thereby making the SVM both an easy-to-understand learning machine and a more likable data modeling (mining) tool. Shigeo Abe has produced the book that will become the standard ... . I like it and therefore highly recommend this book ... ." (Vojislav Kecman, SIAM Review, Vol. 48 (2), 2006)