Birational algebraic geometry

the long version

This book presents proceedings from the Japan-U.S. Mathematics Institute (JAMI) Conference on Birational Algebraic Geometry in Memory of Wei-Liang Chow, held at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in April 1996. These proceedings bring to light the many directions in which birational algebraic geometry is headed. Featured are problems on special models, such as Fanos and their fibrations, adjunctions and subadjunction formuli, projectivity and projective embeddings, and more. Some papers reflect the very frontiers of this rapidly developing area of mathematics. Therefore, in the cases, only directions are given without complete explanations or proofs.