Local search has been applied successfully to a diverse collection of optimization problems. It's appreciated for its basic conceptual foundation, its general applicability, and its power to serve as a source for new search paradigms. The typical characteristics of combinatorial optimization problems to which local search can be applied, its relation to complexity theory, and the combination with randomized search features have led to a wealth of interesting theoretical results. However, these results are scattered throughout the literature.

This is the first book that presents a large collection of theoretical results in a consistent manner, thus providing the reader with a coherent overview of the achievements obtained so far, but also serving as a source of inspiration for the development of novel results in the challenging field of local search.