This is an updated version of the book published in 1985. QCD-motivated, it gives a detailed description of hadron structure and soft interactions in the additive quark model, where hadrons are regarded as composite systems of dressed quarks.

In the past decade it has become clear that nonperturbative QCD, responsible for soft hadronic processes, may differ rather drastically from perturbative QCD. The understanding of nonperturbative QCD requires a detailed investigation of the experiments and the theoretical approaches. Bearing this in mind, the book has been rewritten paying special attention to the interplay of soft hadronic collisions and the quark model. It is at the crossroads of these domains that peculiar features of strong QCD reveal themselves.

The book discusses constituent quarks, diquarks, the massive effective gluons and the problem of scalar isoscalar mesons. The quark–gluonium classification of meson states is also given. Experimentally observed properties of hadrons are presented together with the corresponding theoretical interpretation in the framework of the composite hadron structure.

The text includes a large theoretical part, which shows how to treat composite systems (including relativistic ones) with a technique based on spectral integration. This technique provides the possibility of handling hadrons as weakly bound systems of quarks and, at the same time, takes into account confinement.

Attention is focused on the composite structure revealing itself in high energy hadron collisions. Fields of applicability of the additive quark model are discussed, as is colour screening in hadronic collisions at high and superhigh energies. Along with a detailed presentation of hadron–hadron collisions, a description of hadron–nucleus collisions is given.