As Emile Jouguet remarked, "the shock wave flew off the tip of the pen of a theoretician for the first time" about a hundred years ago. The physics of shock waves has since grown into an independent branch of science closely linked with a wide range of research areas, from astrophysics and plasma physics to solid-state physics. Since the beginning, theoretical investiga tion has kept its leading role. The present book is devoted to actual problems of the theory of shock waves in gases and plasmas, that are of general interest to physicists. It con tains the results of studies on shock...