When the first edition of this book, (formerly titled Dynamical Systems and
their Applications: Linear Theory) was published in 1977, it presented a
reasonably thorough account of the major ideas and results of linear system
theory circa mid-1970s. The past decade has witnessed an explosion of
interest in mathematical system theory with major advances in the understanding
of systems governed by functional differential equations, n-d
systems, system identification, numerical methods, and frequency-domain
techniques, not to mention the creation of an elegant and comprehensive
algebraic and geometric theory of linear systems. And this is just for linear
systems; much more can be said about new results in bifurcation theory,
chaos, fractals, and other nonlinear phenomena, some of which is treated in
my volume, Nonlinear System Theory (Academic Press, 1985), a companion
to the present work.