An up-to-date report on the current status of important research topics in algebraic geometry and its applications, such as computational algebra and geometry, singularity theory algorithms, numerical solutions of polynomial systems, coding theory, communication networks, and computer vision. Contributions on more fundamental aspects of algebraic geometry include expositions related to counting points on varieties over finite fields, Mori theory, linear systems, Abelian varieties, vector bundles on singular curves, degenerations of surfaces, and mirror symmetry of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

An up-to-date report on the current status of important research topics in algebraic geometry and its applications, such as computational algebra and geometry, singularity theory algorithms, numerical solutions of polynomial systems, coding theory, communication networks, and computer vision. Contributions on more fundamental aspects of algebraic geometry include expositions related to counting points on varieties over finite fields, Mori theory, linear systems, Abelian varieties, vector bundles on singular curves, degenerations of surfaces, and mirror symmetry of Calabi-Yau manifolds.

In this book, Miranda takes the approach that algebraic curves are best encountered for the first time over the complex numbers, where the reader's classical intuition about surfaces, integration, and other concepts can be brought into play. Therefore, many examples of algebraic curves are presented in the first chapters. In this way, the book begins as a primer on Riemann surfaces, with complex charts and meromorphic functions taking center stage.But the main examples come from projective curves, and slowly but surely the text moves toward the algebraic category. Proofs of the Riemann-Roch and Serre Duality Theorems are presented in an algebraic manner, via an adaptation of the adelic proof, expressed completely in terms of solving a Mittag-Leffler problem. Sheaves and cohomology are introduced as a unifying device in the latter chapters, so that their utility and naturalness are immediately obvious. Requiring a background of a one semester of complex variable theory and a year of abstract algebra, this is an excellent graduate textbook for a second-semester course in complex variables or a year-long course in algebraic geometry.