B mesons are bound states of a b quark and a light anti-quark. While the binding is provided by the strong interaction B mesons can only decay by the weak interaction. Since the top quark mass is large, B mesons are the only mesons containing quarks of the third generation and thus their decays provide a unique opportunity to measure the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements V_{cb}, V_{ub}, V_{ts}, and V_{td} which describe the couplings of the third generation of quarks to the lighter quarks. We review experimental results on masses, lifetimes and decays of B mesons. These include measurements of the inclusive production of charmed and non-charmed mesons and baryons, observations of semileptonic B decays, B-\bar{B} mixing, B meson lifetimes, measurements of exclusive hadronic final states with charmed mesons, the search for exclusive hadronic final states without charmed mesons, the first observation of the decay B\to K^*��which is described by an electromagnetic penguin diagram and measurement of the inclusive b\to s ��rate. The theoretical implications of these results will be considered.

Latex file, approx 150 pages. Figures available via anonymous ftp. The postscript version (incl. figures) as well as the uuencoded version (incl figures) are available via anonymous ftp at ftp://pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu/pub/hepex/kh as the files breview.ps and breview.uu