Douglas B. West is Professor of Mathematics at Zhejiang Normal University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, where he won a campus-wide teaching award in 2002. Professor West has written more than 250 research articles on diverse topics in combinatorics and has advised 38 doctoral students. His earlier books include Introduction to Graph Theory (2001), a popular textbook adopted around the world for courses. He is Editor-in-Chief of Discrete Mathematics (since 2007) and Associate Editor of the American Mathematical Monthly (editing solutions for the Problems section since 1986). He also maintains web pages at https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~west/ giving links to conferences in discrete mathematics and advice on writing mathematics.

'This is a great book by a great writer. It covers the main topics of combinatorics, is well written and presents many beautiful ideas and techniques. It is very helpful to students, teachers and researchers. I would like to have this book on my desk.' Alexandr Kostochka, University of Illinois

• Introduction; Part I. Enumeration: 1. Combinatorial arguments; 2. Recurrence relations; 3. Generating functions; 4. Further topics; Part II. Graphs: 5. First concepts for graphs; 6. Matchings; 7. Connectivity and cycles; 8. Coloring; 9. Planar graphs; Part III. Sets: 10. Ramsey theory; 11. Extremal problems; 12. Partially ordered sets; 13. Combinatorial designs; Part IV. Methods: 14. The probabilistic method; 15. Linear algebra; 16. Geometry and topology; Appendix. Hints to selected exercises; References; Author index; Notation index; Subject index.

Douglas B. West is Professor of Mathematics at Zhejiang Normal University and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, where he won a campus-wide teaching award in 2002. Professor West has written more than 250 research articles on diverse topics in combinatorics and has advised 38 doctoral students. His earlier books include Introduction to Graph Theory (2001), a popular textbook adopted around the world for courses. He is Editor-in-Chief of Discrete Mathematics (since 2007) and Associate Editor of the American Mathematical Monthly (editing solutions for the Problems section since 1986). He also maintains web pages at https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~west/ giving links to conferences in discrete mathematics and advice on writing mathematics.

'This is a great book by a great writer. It covers the main topics of combinatorics, is well written and presents many beautiful ideas and techniques. It is very helpful to students, teachers and researchers. I would like to have this book on my desk.' Alexandr Kostochka, University of Illinois

• Introduction; Part I. Enumeration: 1. Combinatorial arguments; 2. Recurrence relations; 3. Generating functions; 4. Further topics; Part II. Graphs: 5. First concepts for graphs; 6. Matchings; 7. Connectivity and cycles; 8. Coloring; 9. Planar graphs; Part III. Sets: 10. Ramsey theory; 11. Extremal problems; 12. Partially ordered sets; 13. Combinatorial designs; Part IV. Methods: 14. The probabilistic method; 15. Linear algebra; 16. Geometry and topology; Appendix. Hints to selected exercises; References; Author index; Notation index; Subject index.