The first half of the book covers the current physical principles, processes and design guidelines to generate pulses in the optical range comprising only a few cycles of light, such as generation of relatively low energy pulses at high repetition rates directly from the laser, parametric generation of medium energy pulses and high-energy pulses at low repetition rates using external compression in hollow fibers. The applications cover the revolution in frequency metrology and high resolution laser spectroscopy to electric field synthesis in the optical range as well as the emerging field of attosecond sience and high-harmonic generation, high-resolution optical imaging and novel ultrafast dynamics in semiconductors, which now benefits from the strong electric fields accompanying these pulses in solids during events comprising only a few cylces of light.