Although nearly 25 years have passed since this book was first published, the majority of its content remains up-to-date. Chapters 1 through 6, which cover the basic error estimates for elliptic problems, are still the best available sources for material on this topic. The material covered in Chapters 7 and 8, however, has undergone considerable progress in terms of new applications of the finite element method; therefore, the author provides, in the Preface to the Classics Edition, a bibliography of recent texts that complement the classic material in these chapters.
Audience This book is particularly useful to graduate students, researchers, and engineers using finite element methods. The reader should have knowledge of analysis and functional analysis, particularly Hilbert spaces, Sobolev spaces, and differential calculus in normed vector spaces. Other than these basics, the book is mathematically self-contained.