Book excerpt: Semismooth Newton methods are a modern class of remarkably powerful and versatile algorithms for solving constrained optimization problems with partial differential equations (PDEs), variational inequalities, and related problems. This book provides a comprehensive presentation of these methods in function spaces, striking a balance between thoroughly developed theory and numerical applications. Although largely self-contained, the book also covers recent developments in the field, such as state-constrained problems, and offers new material on topics such as improved mesh independence results. The theory and methods are applied to a range of practically important problems, including: optimal control of nonlinear elliptic differential equations, obstacle problems, and flow control of instationary Navier-Stokes fluids. In addition, the author covers adjoint-based derivative computation and the efficient solution of Newton systems by multigrid and preconditioned iterative methods.