A basic problem in differential geometry is to find canonical metrics on manifolds. The best known example of this is the classical uniformization theorem for Riemann surfaces. Extremal metrics were introduced by Calabi as an attempt at finding a higher-dimensional generalization of this result in the setting of Kahler geometry. This book gives an introduction to the study of extremal Kahler metrics and in particular to the conjectural picture relating the existence of extremal metrics on projective manifolds to the stability of the underlying manifold in the sense of algebraic geometry. The...