The book of famous American authors provides a meaningful analysis of situations and develops a decision-making methodology based on the use of utility functions. The conditions for the existence of utility functions are investigated, much attention is paid to practical methods and procedures for their construction, critical discussion of the methods under consideration and analysis of their applications to real situations. A large number of applications of the described methods to decision-making tasks related to the choice of airport and power plant locations, business activities, medical diagnostics, etc.