The aim of this work is to offer a concise and self-contained
'lecture-style' introduction to the theory of classical rigid geometry
established by John Tate, together with the formal algebraic geometry
approach launched by Michel Raynaud. These Lectures are now viewed
commonly as an ideal means of learning advanced rigid geometry,
regardless of the reader's level of background. Despite its parsimonious
style, the presentation illustrates a number of key facts even more
extensively than any other previous work.
This Lecture Notes Volume is a revised and slightly expanded version of
a preprint that appeared in 2005 at the University of Münster's
Collaborative Research Center "Geometrical Structures in Mathematics".