While I began researching for this book on linear algebra, I was a little startled. Though, it is an accepted phenomenon, that mathematicians are rarely the ones to react surprised, this serious search left me that way for a variety of reasons. First, several of the linear algebra books that my institute library stocked (and it is a really good library) were old and crumbly and dated as far back as 1913 with the most 'new' books only being the ones published in the 1960s. Next, of the few current and recent books that I could manage to find, all of them were intended only as introductory courses for the undergraduate students. Though the pages were crisp, the contents were diluted for the aid of the young learners, and because I needed a book for research-level purposes, my search at the library was futile. And given the fact, that for the past fifteen years, I have been teaching this subject to post-graduate students, this absence of recently published research level books only increased my astonishment.