Sometime in early 1994, I received a letter from World Scientific, Singapore, inviting me to write a book on anyons. That made me think about the whole thing. Initially I was not sure if I should spend about two years of my research career in such a venture. At that time I went through the literature on this field and I had a careful look at the only monograph on this subject by Lerda as well as the book on anyon superconductivity edited by Wilczek. While I liked parts of these books (and their influence is apparent in parts of the book), I also felt that our perceptions are some what different. Having worked on both the non-relativistic as well as the relativistic anyon models, I was finally convinced that perhaps the time had come to accept this opportunity and put forward my point of view and hence this book.