This book provides a systematic and comprehensive account of asymptotic sets and functions from which a broad and useful theory emerges in the areas of optimization and variational inequalities. A variety of motivations leads mathematicians to study questions about attainment of the infimum in a minimization problem and its stability, duality and minmax theorems, convexification of sets and functions, and maximal monotone maps. For each there is the central problem of handling unbounded situations. Such problems arise in theory but also within the development of numerical methods. The book focuses on the notions of asymptotic cones and associated asymptotic functions that provide a natural and unifying framework for the resolution of these types of problems. These notions have been used largely and traditionally in convex analysis, yet these concepts play a prominent and independent role in both convex and nonconvex analysis. This book covers convex and nonconvex problems, offering detailed analysis and techniques that go beyond traditional approaches. The book will serve as a useful reference and self-contained text for researchers and graduate students in the fields of modern optimization theory and nonlinear analysis.