Book excerpt: This volume concentrates on three main areas of current research in high energy physics: (1) multiparticle and diffractive production in perturbative and nonperturbative QCD, (2) confinement-deconfinement mechanism and the RHIC physics, and (3) interface between high-energy collisions and cosmic-ray/astro-physics. The specific topics covered include: QCD at high energies, diffractive production, and small-x physics, multiparticle production and systematics: correlations and fluctuations, hadronic final states in e+e-, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron collisions, relativistic heavy ion collisions, interface between high-energy collisions and cosmic-ray physics, and recent development in deconfinement.