  This book provides a comprehensive introduction for the study of extreme
events in the context of dynamical systems. The introduction provides a broad
overview of the interdisciplinary research area of extreme events, underlining
its relevance for mathematics, natural sciences, engineering, and social
sciences. After exploring the basics of the classical theory of extreme events,
the book presents a careful examination of how a dynamical system can serve as
a generator of stochastic processes, and explores in detail the relationship
between the hitting and return time statistics of a dynamical system and the
possibility of constructing extreme value laws for given observables. Explicit
derivation of extreme value laws are then provided for selected dynamical
systems. The book then discusses how extreme events can be used as probes for
inferring fundamental dynamical and geometrical properties of a dynamical
system and for providing a novel point of view in problems of physical and
geophysical relevance. A final summary of the main results is then presented
along with a discussion of open research questions. Finally, an appendix with
software in Matlab programming language allows the readers to develop further
understanding of the presented concepts.
