The original edition of this book has been out of print for some years. The appear ance of the present second edition owes much to the initiative of Yves Nievergelt at Eastern Washington University, and the support of Ann Kostant, Mathematics Editor at Birkhauser. Since the book was first published, several people have remarked on the absence of exercises and expressed the opinion that the book would have been more useful had exercises been included. In 1997, Yves Nievergelt informed me that, for a decade, he had regularly taught a course at Eastern Washington based on the book, and that he had systematically compiled exercises for his course. He kindly put his work at my disposal. Thus, the present edition appears in two parts. The first is essentially just a reprint of the original edition. I have corrected the misprints of which I have become aware (including those pointed out to me by others), and have made a small number of other minor changes.
