Reviewers of the German edition of this book found that the text deals with facts and descriptions of limestones rather than with glo- bal speculations on facies models or large-scale sedimentation pat- terns. The book is neither a picture-book nor a recipe-book for facies interpretation of carbonates, but an attempt to summarize the present "state of the art" of a rather small but increasingly more im- portant part of geology. The book is written for advanced undergraduate and post-grad- uate students as well as for research workers and exploration geol- ogists who need rapid and intensive training in modern methods of microfacies analysis. The book should facilitate decisions about which methods to use in one's own investigations, and where to look for comparative studies. Microfacies interpretation of carbonate rocks can not rely solely on the investigation of sedimentological and paleontological thin- section data, but must also consider geological and palecological cri- teria. It is beyond the scope of this book to describe all of these as- pects. However, broader applications are indicated in the chapters dealing with the relationships between geochemical as well as physi- cal data and the depositional and diagenetic fabric oflimestones.