This book is, on the one hand, a pedagogical introduction to the formalism of slopes, of semi-stability and of related concepts in the simplest possible context. It is therefore accessible to any graduate student with a basic knowledge in algebraic geometry and algebraic groups. On the other hand, the book also provides a thorough introduction to the basics of period domains, as they appear in the geometric approach to local Langlands correspondences and in the recent conjectural p-adic local Langlands program. The authors provide numerous worked examples and establish many connections to...