  This is a general review on the observations and physics of black hole X-ray
binaries and microquasars, with the emphasize on recent developments in the
high energy regime. The focus is put on understanding the accretion flows and
measuring the parameters of black holes in them. It includes mainly two parts:
(1) Brief review of several recent review article on this subject; (2) Further
development on several topics, including black hole spin measurements, hot
accretion flows, corona formation, state transitions and thermal stability of
standard think disk. This is thus not a regular bottom-up approach, which I
feel not necessary at this stage. Major effort is made in making and
incorporating from many sources useful plots and illustrations, in order to
make this article more comprehensible to non-expert readers. In the end I
attempt to make a unification scheme on the accretion-outflow (wind/jet)
connections of all types of accreting BHs of all accretion rates and all BH
mass scales, and finally provide a brief outlook.
