Near-field optics is a new and growing field in microscopy which exploits small apertures in close proximity to imaged surfaces to achieve super resolution. This illustrated book is designed as a user's guide, a reference and an entrance to the literature. It introduces the basic optics necessary to understand near-field phenomena and describes the instrumentation design of the near-field optical microscope, as well as providing applications of this methodology to areas such as semiconductors, lasers and optical data storage