With the appearance of the Ninth Edition, this book begins its forty-ninth year. Throughout its long history, this casebook has relied on classic cases to capture the fundamental principles of contract law, and this edition reinforces this tradition.This new edition preserves and builds upon the book"s distinctive character, especially its use of canonical cases, its sensitivity to the history and evolution of doctrine, and its close attention to the legal consequences of breach. As before, this edition eschews any distinctive take on the law of contracts and thus allows each teacher using the book a broad range of choice on what to bring in to channel or expand classroom discussion.The most visible alteration in this edition is a restructuring and reordering of some material both to underscore basic themes and put in clearer perspective the developments of the twentieth century.