n and extensions.】 In some cases the analysis is pushed a little deeper into the heart of tion: the study of metastable sy r gener al elements etc.),bu ys in a concrete phys atic all,this is meant but at the same tim relatively self-contained and comprehensive,textbook on quantum me- chanics. The book is organized as follows.Part I is an elementary introduction to the basics of quantum mechanics.Together with some initial sections on perturbation theory and variational methods in Part II,Part I could correspond to standard material for an introductory semester course on quantum mechanics in most universities.Part II is dedicated to the three standard methods of approximation,perturbation theory.the vari- ational method,and the semiclassical approximation,through which the concepts in the theory are further developed and the range of applicabil. ity vastly increased.In Part III the formalism and methods of analyses dep ndent Ham tonians,general discussions of met stems,the ion of electrically ch agneticields,atoms and el PartIVsdBdicatedtotwofndanentalisy ment and the me is 10 natures,ranging fr a review of es,to some advanced topics,techni and mathematical appendices.The are independent of each other there is no ordering among them,and many are even independent of the main text,so that each of them can be read at leisure in a convenient moment for each reader. an- The accompanying CD,as already anticipated,contains the Mathe matica notebooks and PDF files in which the problems proposed at the be end of each chapter are solved and discussed.The subfiles for each chap- ical ter contain all the notebooks of that chapter,accompanied by a file called an Guide-to-NB.nb.In this file a list of all the Mathematica notebooks of r that chapter is given,as well as a brief description of each notebook.All Th analyses have been done by using Mathematica 6.Wolfram Research and t ested with Mathematica 7,which has just come out. hat updates and http://www.df.uipi.it/-konish http://www.df.unipi.it/-paffuti opy English and for his inv the the responsibilityf any errors ext o os,for ny mislea s,whic ch may undo remain or might have been introduced during the course of corrections