This volume contains fourteen articles that represent the AMS Special Session on Special Functions and Orthogonal Polynomials, held in Tucson, Arizona in April of 2007. It gives an overview of the modern field of special functions with all major subfields represented, including: applications to algebraic geometry, asymptotic analysis, conformal mapping, differential equations, elliptic functions, fractional calculus, hypergeometric and $q$-hypergeometric series, nonlinear waves, number theory, symbolic and numerical evaluation of integrals, and theta functions. A few articles are expository, with extensive bibliographies, but all contain original research. This book is intended for pure and applied mathematicians who are interested in recent developments in the theory of special functions. It covers a wide range of active areas of research and demonstrates the vitality of the field.