Book excerpt: An abstract Volterra operator is, roughly speaking, a compact operator in a Hilbert space whose spectrum consists of a single point $\lambda=0$. The theory of abstract Volterra operators, significantly developed by the authors of the book and their collaborators, represents an important part of the general theory of non-self-adjoint operators in Hilbert spaces. The book, intended for all mathematicians interested in functional analysis and its applications, discusses the main ideas and results of the theory of abstract Volterra operators. Of particular interest to analysts and specialists in differential equations are the results about analytic models of abstract Volterra operators and applications to boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations.