Book excerpt: George Collins’ discovery of Cylindrical Algebraic Decomposition (CAD) as a method for Quantifier Elimination (QE) for the elementary theory of real closed fields brought a major breakthrough in automating mathematics with recent important applications in high-tech areas (e.g. robot motion), also stimulating fundamental research in computer algebra over the past three decades. This volume is a state-of-the-art collection of important papers on CAD and QE and on the related area of algorithmic aspects of real geometry. It contains papers from a symposium held in Linz in 1993, reprints of seminal papers from the area including Tarski’s landmark paper as well as a survey outlining the developments in CAD based QE that have taken place in the last twenty years.