  The top quark is the heaviest elementary particle observed to date. Its large
mass makes the top quark an ideal laboratory to test predictions of
perturbation theory concerning heavy quark production at hadron colliders. The
top quark is also a powerful probe for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model
of particle physics. In addition, the top quark mass is a crucial parameter for
scrutinizing the Standard Model in electroweak precision tests and for
predicting the mass of the yet unobserved Higgs boson. Ten years after the
discovery of the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron top quark physics has
entered an era where detailed measurements of top quark properties are
undertaken. In this review article an introduction to the phenomenology of top
quark production in hadron collisions is given, the lessons learned in Tevatron
Run I are summarized, and first Run II results are discussed. A brief outlook
to the possibilities of top quark research a the Large Hadron Collider,
currently under construction at CERN, is included.
