During the past three decades fundamental progress has been made on constructing large torsion-free subgroups (i.e. subgroups of finite index) of the unit group $U (Z G)$ of the integral group ring $Z G$ of a finite group $G$. These constructions rely on explicit constructions of units in $Z G$ and proofs of main results make use of the description of the Wedderburn components of the rational group algebra $Q G$. The latter relies on explicit constructions of primitive central idempotents and the rational representations of $G$. It turns out that the existence of reduced two degree representations play a crucial role. Although the unit group is far from being understood, some structure results on this group have been obtained. In this paper we give a survey of some of the fundamental results and the essential needed techniques.
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