  I review our current understanding of massive black hole (MBH) formation and
evolution along the cosmic history. After a brief introductory overview of the
relevance of MBHs in the hierarchical structure formation paradigm, I discuss
the main viable channels for seed BH formation at high redshift and for their
subsequent mass growth and spin evolution. The emerging hierarchical picture,
where MBHs grow through merger triggered accretion episodes, acquiring their
mass while shining as quasars, is overall robust, but too simplistic to explain
the diversity observed in MBH phenomenology. I briefly discuss which future
observations will help to shed light on the MBH cosmic history in the near
future, paying particular attention to the upcoming gravitational wave window.
