Parts I and II of Large Scale Linear and Integer Programming provide an introduction to linear optimization using two simple but unifying ideas-projection and inverse projection. The ideas of projection and inverse projection are also extended to integer linear optimization. With the projection-inverse projection approach, theoretical results in integer linear optimization become much more analogous to their linear optimization counterparts. Hence, with an understanding of these two concepts, the reader is equipped to understand fundamental theorems in an intuitive way.

Part III presents the most important algorithms that are used in commercial software for solving real-world problems. Part IV shows how to take advantage of the special structure in very large scale applications through decomposition. Part V describes how to take advantage of special structure by modifying and enhancing the algorithms developed in Part III. This section contains a discussion of the current research in linear and integer linear programming. The author also shows in Part V how to take different problem formulations and appropriately 'modify' them so that the algorithms from Part III are more efficient. Again, the projection and inverse projection concepts are used in Part V to present the current research in linear and integer linear optimization in a very unified way.