The book contains survey and research articles devoted mainly to geometry and harmonic analysis of symmetric spaces and to corresponding aspects of group representation theory. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Russian mathematician, F. I. Karpelevich (1927 - 2000). Of particular interest are the survey articles by Sawyer on the Abel transform on noncompact Riemannian symmetric spaces, and by Anker and Ostellari on estimates for heat kernels on such spaces, as well as the article by Bernstein and Gindikin on integral geometry for families of curves. There are also many research papers on topics of current interest. The book is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in harmonic analysis and representation theory.