  Measurements of the rates for the hadronic decays B^+- -> pi K can be used to
derive information on the weak phase gamma=arg(V_ub^*) in a largely
model-independent way. Hadronic uncertainties can be reduced to the level of
nonfactorizable contributions to the decay amplitudes that are power-suppressed
in Lambda/m_b and, in addition, either violate SU(3) flavor symmetry or are
doubly Cabibbo suppressed. Various strategies to obtain bounds on gamma and to
extract its value with small theoretical uncertainty are described. The
potential of B^+- -> pi K decays for probing physics beyond the Standard Model
is also discussed.
