This English edition of Yuri I. Manin's well-received lecture notes provides a concise but extremely lucid exposition of the basics of algebraic geometry and sheaf theory. The lectures were originally held in Moscow in the late 1960s, and the corresponding preprints were widely circulated among Russian mathematicians. This book will be of interest to students majoring in algebraic geometry and theoretical physics (high energy physics, solid body, astrophysics) as well as to researchers and scholars in these areas. "This is an excellent introduction to the basics of Grothendieck's theory of schemes; the very best first reading about the subject that I am aware of. I would heartily recommend every grad student who wants to study algebraic geometry to read it prior to reading more advanced textbooks."- Alexander Beilinson