Book excerpt: The appearance of Banach's book [8] in 1932 signified the beginning of a syste matic study of normed linear spaces, which have been the subject of continuous research ever since. In the sixties, and especially in the last decade, the research activity in this area grew considerably. As a result, Ban:ach space theory gained very much in depth as well as in scope: Most of its well known classical problems were solved, many interesting new directions were developed, and deep connections between Banach space theory and other areas of mathematics were established. The purpose of this book is to present the main results and current research directions in the geometry of Banach spaces, with an emphasis on the study of the structure of the classical Banach spaces, that is C(K) and Lip.) and related spaces. We did not attempt to write a comprehensive survey of Banach space theory, or even only of the theory of classical Banach spaces, since the amount of interesting results on the subject makes such a survey practically impossible.