Best method of including an abstract in a latex 'book'?

I've been looking for the answer to this question for a while 开发者_如何学JAVAnow but can't seem to find it, so I'm hoping someone on here can help me.

I'm writing up a thesis in Latex, and really like the \frontmatter, \mainmatter and \backmatter ability when using the "book" environment. However I need to add an abstract and the \begin{abstract} environment is undefined when creating a "book". If I change to a "report" however, I lose the functionality of the *matter terms.

So what I really need to know is: is there a simple method of including an abstract in a "book" and have it formatted the same as it would be in a "report"? (i.e. centered vertically and horizontally with an 'abstract' heading)

Thanks for any help! First post on stackoverflow after reading for months!

Thanks to Jacob for the help. The code below is the closest I could get without making any drastic changes. If someone has a more 'proper' method of implementing this I'd be glad to hear it. ;)

\chapter*{\centering \begin{normalsize}Abstract\end{normalsize}}
\begin{quotation}
\noindent % abstract text
\end{quotation}
\clearpage

\chapter*{Abstract}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Abstract}

Best I could come up with.

You can center it with

\chapter*{\centering Abstract}

I recommend the memoir environment. It is very well documented and AFAIR it provides all features you need.