  A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary
cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the
hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating
tolopogical defects. We also discuss the theory of a stationary
self-reproducing inflationary universe, and its possible implications for
evaluating the most probable values of the gravitational and cosmological
constants. Finally, we discuss some preliminary results concerning possible
nonperturbative large-scale deviations of density from the critical density in
inflationary universe.
