This book completely solves the problem of representing rings (and modules over them), which are locally noetherian over subsets of their prime spectrum by structure sheaves over this subset. In order to realise this, one has to develop the necessary localization theory as well as to study local equivalents of familiar concepts like the Artin-Rees property, Ore sets and the second layer condition. The first part of the book is introductory and self-contained, and might serve as a starting course (at graduate level) on localization theory within Grothendieck categories. The second part is more specialised and provides the basic machinery needed to effectively these structure sheaves, as well as to study their functorial behaviour. In this way, the book should be viewed as a first introduction to what should be called relative noncommutative algebraic geometry.

Categories and sheaves appear almost frequently in contemporary advanced mathematics. This book covers categories, homological algebra and sheaves in a systematic manner starting from scratch and continuing with full proofs to the most recent results in the literature, and sometimes beyond. The authors present the general theory of categories and functors, emphasizing inductive and projective limits, tensor categories, representable functors, ind-objects and localization.

Sheaf Theory is modern, active field of mathematics at the intersection of algebraic topology, algebraic geometry and partial differential equations. This volume offers a comprehensive and self-contained treatment of Sheaf Theory from the basis up, with emphasis on the microlocal point of view. From the reviews: "Clearly and precisely written, and contains many interesting ideas: it describes a whole, largely new branch of mathematics." –Bulletin of the L.M.S.