Book excerpt: Lie theory has connections to many other disciplines such as geometry, number theory, mathematical physics, and algebraic combinatorics. The interaction between algebra, geometry and combinatorics has proven to be extremely powerful in shedding new light on each of these areas. This book presents the lectures given at the Fields Institute Summer School on Geometric Representation Theory and Extended Affine Lie Algebras held at the University of Ottawa in 2009. It provides a systematic account by experts of some of the exciting developments in Lie algebras and representation theory in the last two decades. It includes topics such as geometric realizations of irreducible representations in three different approaches, combinatorics and geometry of canonical and crystal bases, finite $W$-algebras arising as the quantization of the transversal slice to a nilpotent orbit, structure theory of extended affine Lie algebras, and representation theory of affine Lie algebras at level zero. This book will be of interest to mathematicians working in Lie algebras and to graduate students interested in learning the basic ideas of some very active research directions. The extensive references in the book will be helpful to guide non-experts to the original sources.