Book excerpt: A clear, self-contained treatment of important areas in complex analysis, this text is geared toward upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The material is largely classical, with particular emphasis on the geometry of complex mappings. Author William A. Veech, the Edgar Odell Lovett Professor of Mathematics at Rice University, presents the Riemann mapping theorem as a special case of an existence theorem for universal covering surfaces. His focus on the geometry of complex mappings makes frequent use of Schwarz's lemma. He constructs the universal covering surface of an arbitrary planar region and employs the modular function to develop the theorems of Landau, Schottky, Montel, and Picard as consequences of the existence of certain coverings. Concluding chapters explore Hadamard product theorem and prime number theorem.