This comprehensive and up-to-date survey deals with the distribution and the structural and functional properties of the large lakes of the world. For the first time aquatic physicists, chemists, sedimentologists and a wide range of freshwater biologists joined in order to assess our current understanding of large lakes. Special interest focuses on physical factors, in particular wind stress, internal waves and current jets which have a particularly strong impact on large lakes. Since they also possess a true free-water zone, large lakes can ideally serve as model oceans.