The document discusses red-black trees, which are a type of self-balancing binary search tree. Red-black trees were invented in 1972 by Rudolf Bayer as a way to maintain the balancing of binary search trees during insertion and deletion operations. They support common binary search tree operations like search, insert, and delete in O(log n) time on average and worst case. The document outlines the properties and balancing operations used to maintain a red-black tree during insertions and deletions.