This chapter provides an overview of the book "Compact Complex Surfaces" by W. Barth, K. Hulek, C. Peters, and A. Van de Ven, which is part of the " Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete" series. The book covers various aspects of complex surface theory, including topology, algebra, differential geometry, and Kodaira's classification. It also discusses recent developments such as the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants, which have significantly advanced the understanding of the differentiable structure of algebraic surfaces. The authors acknowledge the contributions of numerous colleagues and institutions that supported the preparation of the book, and they express gratitude to those who provided valuable feedback and corrections. The content is structured into several sections, including preliminaries, curves on surfaces, mappings of surfaces, general properties of surfaces, examples, the Enriques-Kodaira classification, surfaces of general type, K3-surfaces and Enriques surfaces, and special topics.This chapter provides an overview of the book "Compact Complex Surfaces" by W. Barth, K. Hulek, C. Peters, and A. Van de Ven, which is part of the " Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete" series. The book covers various aspects of complex surface theory, including topology, algebra, differential geometry, and Kodaira's classification. It also discusses recent developments such as the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants, which have significantly advanced the understanding of the differentiable structure of algebraic surfaces. The authors acknowledge the contributions of numerous colleagues and institutions that supported the preparation of the book, and they express gratitude to those who provided valuable feedback and corrections. The content is structured into several sections, including preliminaries, curves on surfaces, mappings of surfaces, general properties of surfaces, examples, the Enriques-Kodaira classification, surfaces of general type, K3-surfaces and Enriques surfaces, and special topics.