This book provides a comprehensive introduction to X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. The first part discusses the basic theoretical and observational topics related to black hole astrophysics; the optics and the detectors employed in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy; and past, present, and future X-ray and gamma-ray missions. The second part then describes data reduction and analysis, the statistics used in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, and demonstrates how to write a successful proposal and a scientific paper. Data reduction in connection with specific X-ray and gamma-ray missions is covered in the appendices. Presenting the state of the art in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, this is both a valuable textbook for students and an important reference resource for researchers in the field.

Cosimo Bambi is Xie Xide Junior Chair Professor at the Department of Physics at Fudan University (China). He received his Ph.D. from Ferrara University (Italy) in 2007 and was a postdoc at Wayne State University (Michigan), IPMU at The University of Tokyo (Japan), and at LMU Munich (Germany). He moved to Fudan University at the end of 2012 under the Thousand Young Talents Program. His research interests cover several areas in gravity, cosmology, and high-energy astrophysics. He has published more than 100 papers on refereed journals as first or corresponding author, has over 3,500 citations, and his h-index is 36. He has authored three books, and edited one volume (in ASSL) with Springer.