Annotation This book contains a thorough discussion of the classical topics in information theory together with the first comprehensive treatment of network coding, a subject first emerged under information theory in the mid 1990's that has now diffused into coding theory, computer networks, wireless communications, complexity theory, cryptography, graph theory, etc. With a large number of examples, illustrations, and original problems, this book is excellent as a textbook or reference book for a senior or graduate level course on the subject, as well as a reference for researchers in related fields.