This volume consists of twelve review articles and a variety of short contributions which are based on lectures presented at the International Symposium on Photopion Nuclear Physics. The review articles were submitted after the sym posium, and there was considerable editing and cross referen cing with the aim of achieving a greater overall unity than ordinarily found in conference proceedings. Photopion Nuclear Physics, as the name suggests, combines two of the most active areas of current intermediate energy nuclear physics research - electromagnetic phenomena as studied by means of electron scattering and photonuclear pro cesses, and mesonic effects in nuclei. The potential value of photopion studies as a complement to electron scattering for the study of spin-isospin aspects of nuclear transitions has been widely recognized for about a decade, thanks to the the oretical work at such institutions as Stanford and Catholic Universities. In fact, some of this theoretical work was done in anticipation of the advent of the new high duty cycle and good energy resolution electron linacs. The potential for using this reaction to study mesonic effects was not as broad ly addressed at that time. However, as seen in the following pages of these proceedings, that situation has dramatically changed.

Photoproduction of pions from complex nuclei has become an investigative tool for (1) the detailed form of the elementary photopion amplitude, (2) the pion-nucleus optical potential, (3) nuclear structure, and (4) off-shell and medium effects on the elementary amplitude in nuclear processes. In this book, all these aspects are considered in detail. With improved experimental accuracy and beam tech- nology the study of nuclear pion photoproduction will break new ground and become an even more powerful investigative tool. This monograph is intended as an introductory guide as well as a reference manual for grad- uate students and researchers working in this important area of physics.

The unique role of strangeness in nuclear physics has recently attracted much attention, from both the theoretical and experimental viewpoints. This is due not only to the broad spectrum of possible hadron many-body systems with strangeness, but also to the fact that strangeness gives us an opportunity to study fundamental baryon-baryon interactions in a new perspective. Our knowledge of this subject has widened as the scope of hypernuclear experiments has expanded from strangeness exchange and the associated production reactions to hypernuclear weak decays, ? decays, cascade hypernuclei, double-? events, electroproduction of strangeness, etc. This trend will be accelerated by the full operation of new laboratories such as TJLab, COSY, DAèNE, JHF, MAMI, and others. Various aspects of those important and exciting topics are discussed in this book in order to get a perspective of this fast developing area of nuclear physics.