This book is first of all designed as a text for the course usually called "theory of functions of a real variable". This course is at present cus­ tomarily offered as a first or second year graduate course in United States universities, although there are signs that this sort of analysis will soon penetrate upper division undergraduate curricula. We have included every topic that we think essential for the training of analysts, and we have also gone down a number of interesting bypaths. We hope too that the book will be useful as a reference for mature mathematicians and other scientific workers. Hence we have presented very general and complete versions of a number of important theorems and constructions. Since these sophisticated versions may be difficult for the beginner, we have given elementary avatars of all important theorems, with appro­ priate suggestions for skipping. We have given complete definitions, ex­ planations, and proofs throughout, so that the book should be usable for individual study as well as for a course text.