  The variational Hamiltonian approach to QCD in Coulomb gauge is reviewed and
the essential results obtained in recent years are summarized. First the
results for the vacuum sector are discussed, with a special emphasis on the
mechansim of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. Then the deconfinement
phase transition is described by introducing temperature in the Hamiltonian
approach via compactification of one spatial dimension. The effective action
for the Polyakov loop is calculated and the order of the phase transition as
well as the critical temperatures are obtained for the color group SU(2) and
SU(3). In both cases, our predictions are in good agreement with lattice
calculations.
