This is the second of four volumes that will eventually present the full corpus of Zariski's mathematical contributions. Like the first volume (subtitled Foundations of Algebraic Geometry and Resolution of Singularities and edited by H. Hironaka and D. Mumford), it is divided into two parts, each devoted to a large but circumscribed area of research activity. The first part, containing eight papers introduced by Artin, deals with the...