This volume is composed of four major in-depth yet pedagogic review chapters on the subject of star formation, written by the foremost researchers in the field. Recent infrared and millimeter radio observations are respectively reviewed by Charlie Lada and Phil Myers, both of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The theoretical work is reviewed by Frank Shu of UC-Berkeley on the gravitational collapse of dense cores in a giant molecular cloud to form sunlike stars and Bruce Elmegreen of IBM-Watson on the gravitational instability, leading to large-scale star formation. They have...