Over the past few years we have seen remarkable, and at times independent advances in the understanding of extended objects like strings, black holes and membranes at the ''microscopic'' level. This volume primarily focuses on the synthesis of many diverse ideas in the physics of extended objects. The topics discussed include black holes as solutions of superstrings, string-membrane duality, QCD and strings, and nonperturbative strings.

Over the past few years we have seen remarkable, and at times independent advances in the understanding of extended objects like strings, black holes and membranes at the ''microscopic'' level. This volume primarily focuses on the synthesis of many diverse ideas in the physics of extended objects. The topics discussed include black holes as solutions of superstrings, string-membrane duality, QCD and strings, and nonperturbative strings.