Intended for graduate students, advanced undergraduates and research staff in particle physics and related disciplines and will also be of interest to physicists not working in this field who want an overview of the present development of the subject.

A comprehensive and up-to-date overview of soft and hard diffraction processes in strong interaction physics. The first part covers soft hadron—hadron scattering in a complete and mature presentation. It can be used as a textbook in particle physics classes. Chapters 8-11 address graduate students as well as researchers, covering the "new diffraction": the pomeron in QCD, low-x physics, diffractive deep inelastic scattering and related processes.