This textbook on the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems for nonmathematical advanced undergraduate or graduate students is also a reference book for researchers in the physical and social sciences. It provides a comprehensive introduction including linear systems, stability theory of nonlinear systems, bifurcation theory, chaotic dynamics. Discussion of the measure--theoretic approach to dynamical systems and the relation between deterministic systems and stochastic processes is featured. There are a hundred exercises and an associated website provides a software program, computer exercises and answers to selected book exercises.

Alfredo Medio is currently Professor of Mathematical Economics at the University 'Ca' Foscari' of Venice and Director of the International Center of Economics and Finance at the Venice International University. After receiving a Ph.D. in Economics from Cambridge University he taught at several universities around the world, including the New School for Social Research (New York), the Ecole of Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales (Marseilles), Duke University and the University of Paris. He also served as Economic Affairs Officer of UNCTAD (Geneva). Professor Medio is the author of numerous articles published in learned journals and of the book Chaotic Dynamics: Theory and Applications to Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

1. Statics and dynamics: some elementary concepts; 2. Review of linear systems; 3. Stability of fixed points; 4. Invariant and attracting sets, periodic and quasiperiodic orbits; 5. Local bifurcations; 6. Chaotic sets and chaotic attractors; 7. Characteristic exponents, fractals, homoclinic orbits; 8. Transition to chaos; 9. The ergodic approach; 10. Deterministic systems and stochastic processes.