InhaltsangabeI: Examples of Varieties and Maps.- Lecture 1 Affine and Projective Varieties.- Lecture 2 Regular Functions and Maps.- Lecture 3 Cones, Projections, and More About Products.- Lecture 4 Families and Parameter Spaces.- Lecture 5 Ideals of Varieties, Irreducible Decomposition, and the Nullstellensatz.- Lecture 6 Grassmannians and Related Varieties.- Lecture 7 Rational Functions and Rational Maps.- Lecture 8 More Examples.- Lecture 9 Determinantal Varieties.- Lecture 10 Algebraic Groups.- II: Attributes of Varieties.- Lecture 11 Definitions of Dimension and Elementary Examples.- Lecture 12 More Dimension Computations.- Lecture 13 Hilbert Polynomials.- Lecture 14 Smoothness and Tangent Spaces.- Lecture 15 Gauss Maps, Tangential and Dual Varieties.- Lecture 16 Tangent Spaces to Grassmannians.- Lecture 17 Further Topics Involving Smoothness and Tangent Spaces.- Lecture 18 Degree.- Lecture 19 Further Examples and Applications of Degree.- Lecture 20 Singular Points and Tangent Cones.- Lecture 21 Parameter Spaces and Moduli Spaces.- Lecture 22 Quadrics.- Hints for Selected Exercises.- References.