This volume is the outgrowth of a Special Session on Geometry, held at the November 1987 meeting of the AMS at the University of California at Los Angeles. The unusually well-attended session attracted more than sixty participants and featured over forty addresses by some of the day’s outstanding geometers. By common consent, it was decided that the papers to be collected in the present volume should be surveys of relatively broad areas of geometry, rather than detailed presentations of new research results. A comprehensive survey of the field is beyond the scope of a volume such as this. Nonetheless, the editors have sought to provide all geometers, whatever their specialties, with some insight into recent developments in a variety of topics in this active area of research.