This book provides a full-scale presentation of all methods and techniques available for the solution of the Knapsack problem. This most basic combinatorial optimization problem appears explicitly or as a subproblem in a wide range of optimization models with backgrounds such diverse as cutting and packing, finance, logistics or general integer programming. This monograph spans the range from a comprehensive introduction of classical algorithmic methods to the unified presentation of the most recent and advanced results in this area many of them originating from the authors. The chapters dealing with particular versions and extensions of the Knapsack problem are self-contained to a high degree and provide a valuable source of reference for researchers. Due to its simple structure, the Knapsack problem is an ideal model for introducing solution techniques to students of computer science, mathematics and economics. The first three chapters give an in-depth treatment of several basic techniques, making the book also suitable as underlying literature for courses in combinatorial optimization and approximation.

Thirteen years have passed since the seminal book on knapsack problems by Martello and Toth appeared. On this occasion a former colleague exclaimed back in 1990: "How can you write 250 pages on the knapsack problem?" Indeed, the definition of the knapsack problem is easily understood even by a non-expert who will not suspect the presence of challenging research topics in this area at the first glance. However, in the last decade a large number of research publications contributed new results for the knapsack problem in all areas of interest such as exact algorithms, heuristics and approximation schemes. Moreover, the extension of the knapsack problem to higher dimensions both in the number of constraints and in the num ber of knapsacks, as well as the modification of the problem structure concerning the available item set and the objective function, leads to a number of interesting variations of practical relevance which were the subject of intensive research during the last few years. Hence, two years ago the idea arose to produce a new monograph covering not only the most recent developments of the standard knapsack problem, but also giving a comprehensive treatment of the whole knapsack family including the siblings such as the subset sum problem and the bounded and unbounded knapsack problem, and also more distant relatives such as multidimensional, multiple, multiple-choice and quadratic knapsack problems in dedicated chapters."