It has only been a couple of decades since Benoit Mandelbrot published his famous picture of what is now called the Mandelbrot set. That picture, now seeming graphically primitive, has changed our view of the mathematical and physical universe. The properties and circumstances of the discovery of the Mandelbrot Set continue to generate much interest in the research community and beyond. This book contains the hard-to-obtain original papers, many unpublished illustrations dating back to 1979 and extensive documented historical context showing how Mandelbrot helped change our way of looking at the world.