  We examine the motion and tidal dynamics of a nonrotating black hole placed
within a post-Newtonian external spacetime. The tidal perturbation created by
the external environment is treated as a small perturbation. At a large
distance from the black hole, the gravitational field of the external
distribution of matter is assumed to be sufficiently weak to be adequately
described by the (first) post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity.
There, the black hole is treated as a monopole contribution to the total
gravitational field. There exists an overlap in the domains of validity of each
description, and the black-hole and post-Newtonian metrics are matched in the
overlap. The matching procedure produces the equations of motion for the black
hole and the gravito-electric and gravito-magnetic tidal fields acting on the
black hole. We first calculate the equations of motion and tidal fields by
making no assumptions regarding the nature of the post-Newtonian environment;
this could contain a continuous distribution of matter or any number of
condensed bodies. We next specialize our discussion to a situation in which the
black hole is a member of a post-Newtonian two-body system. As an application
of our results, we examine the geometry of the deformed event horizon and
calculate the tidal heating of the black hole, the rate at which it acquires
mass as a result of its tidal interaction with the companion body.
