This book grew out of notes from several courses that the first author has taught over the past nine years at the California Institute of Technology， and earlier at the Johns Hopkins University， Cornell University， the University of Chicago， and the University of Crete. Our general aim is to provide a modem approach to number theory through a blending of complementary algebraic and analytic perspectives， emphasizing harmonic analysis on topological groups. Our more particular goal is to cover John Tate's visionary thesis， giving virtually all of the necessary analytic details and topological preliminaries-technical prerequisites that are often foreign to the typical， more algebraically inclined number theorist. Most of the existing treatments of Tate's thesis， including Tate's own， range from terse to cryptic： our intent is to be more leisurely， more comprehensive， and more comprehensible. To this end we have assembled material that has admittedly been treated elsewhere， but not in a single volume with so much detail and not with our particular focus.
　　We address our text to students who have taken a year of graduate-level courses in algebra， analysis， and topology. While our choice of objects and methods is naturally guided by the specific mathematical goals of the text， our approach is by no means narrow. In fact， the subject matter at hand is germane
　　not only to budding number theorists， but also to students of harmonic analysis or the representation theory of Lie groups. We hope， moreover， that our work will be a good reference for working mathematicians interested in any of these fields.