Papers are usually reviewed by ~3 reviewers who can ask for revisions. Reviewers are typically anonymous to the authors, although the authors are usually not anonymous to the reviewers. If the reviewers ask for revisions (most common), the authors can revise the paper. This can go back and forth numerous times.

Reviewers can be professors, PhD students, etc. and are paid by the journal for their time. There are many ways to manipulate the system. Reviewers can block or slow the publication of a rival, or they can suggest changes that benefit themselves (e.g. quid pro quo). Often this isn't so blatant and the line can be very blurry.

The publisher and editor typically don't care much about the politics and conflicts of interest.

We'd been learning Prolog in class for the past two weeks but I'm terrible at learning from lectures, so eventually I decided it'd be a better use of my time to locate a book I could teach myself from rather than doodling in class.

IIRC it hadn't been checked out since the 80's: it was a slim volume on Prolog with an Alice in Wonderland theme. I can't remember the title or anything, but it was an enjoyable read, and effective: I still hadn't written any Prolog at the time of the exam—which I remember was 4 days out at the time I picked up the book— but I understood it well enough by then to solve all the problems without flaw including some extra credit challenge problem :)

Has anyone else come across this book?