Hamiltonian Structures and Generating Families

This book is an enhanced version of an earlier Russian edition. Besides thorough revisions, more emphasis was put on reordering the topics according to a category-theoretical view. This allows the mathematical results to be stated, proved, and understood in a much easier and elegant way. From the reviews of the Russian edition: "The main accent is shifted to the application . . . in geometrical optics, thermostatics and control theory, and not to the Hamiltonian mechanics only. . . . T