Book excerpt: Every mathematician working in Banaeh spaee geometry or Approximation theory knows, from his own experienee, that most "natural" geometrie properties may faH to hold in a generalnormed spaee unless the spaee is an inner produet spaee. To reeall the weIl known definitions, this means IIx 11 = *, where is an inner (or: scalar) product on E, Le. a function from ExE to the underlying (real or eomplex) field satisfying: (i) O for x o. (ii) is linear in x. (iii) = (intherealease, thisisjust =