'The computer simulations can readily illustrate the physical ideas inside the equations and leave the reader immediately able to perform new simulations. The book is aimed at a new student of accelerator physics, and would be suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate study. The book would also be interesting for a professional looking to use Matlab in their work ... The text is nicely written and easy to follow ... This book is ideally suited to a student new to the field who would like to quickly get up to speed with making real numerical simulations.'Contemporary PhysicsThis book explores a first introduction to particle beams and accelerators. The text uses the suite of tools made available in the MATLAB package. Since many colleges have a site wide license, these tools are often freely available to students. A brief introduction to those tools is made initially. Analogues in classical optics are introduced where useful. The text is compact and focuses on graphical data display and dynamical 'movies' as an aid to understanding specific systems. Hands on dialogue using command line inputs, 'apps', and 'live' tools are stressed. The extensive algebraic steps are subsumed into the associated scripts, where the symbolic math utilities spare the reader from the math manipulations. Both beams and periodic structures are covered. Dispersion, insertions, acceleration and light sources are discussed.