Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are among the most violent occurrences in the
universe. They are powerful explosions, visible to high redshift, and thought
to be the signature of black hole birth. They are highly luminous events and
provide excellent probes of the distant universe. GRB research has greatly
advanced over the past 10 years with the results from Swift, Fermi and an
active follow-up community. In this review we survey the interplay between
these recent observations and the theoretical models of the prompt GRB emission
and the subsequent afterglows.Comment: 16 pages and 15 figures. Invited review article to appear in the
special issue of Frontiers of Physics on High Energy Astrophysics, eds. B.
Zhang and P. Meszaro
