As stated in the preface, this book is intended to bridge a gap in the existing condensed matter literature. There are a number of good textbooks on solid-state and many-body physics, but virtually none that venture into the field of soft condensed matter and presents in a unified format the basic concepts of condensed matter physics. These are exemplified by broken symmetry, critical phenomena, and the role of fluctuations and topological defects in establishing different ordered phases and associated transitions. The present book is especially welcome at a time when we are witnessing vigorous activity in all fields concerned with "soft" matter, starting from the classical examples of liquid crystalline and polymer physics and membrane physics, leading up to "hard" condensed matter, which encompasses quasicrystals, incommensurate crystals, classical fluids, and regular crystals. The book is aimed at a graduate audience and contains a selection of problems following each chapter. It contains a thorough and detailed treatment of all the subjects and is intended also to be suitable as a reference text for active reseachers.