This book has evolved from my experience over the past decade in teaching and doing research in functional analysis and certain of its appli- cations. These applications are to optimization theory in general and to best approximation theory in particular. The geometric nature of the subjects has greatly influenced the approach to functional analysis presented herein, especially its basis on the unifying concept of convexity. Most of the major theorems either concern or depend on properties of convex sets; the others generally pertain to conjugate spaces or compactness properties, both of...