For my finals, I am digging through the book by Varadarajan [An introduction to harmonic analysis on semisimple Lie groups][1]. I find it a rather hard read and I feel it's a bit outdated now. Any recommendation of a more modern (and/or) introductory treatment to the topics covered by this book would be greatly appreciated.

I am more interested in the representation theory, although I find the connection to to harmonic analysis intriguing. Having learned finite-dimensional representation theory I wanted to move on to the infinite-dimensional one. From harmonic analysis I know only the classical Pontryagin duality, which I thought is enough to get me started, but I've found Varadarajan's approach based on examples difficult to follow.


  [1]: http://books.google.com/books?id=seycdRenNfoC&lpg=PP1&dq=varadarajan%2520harmonic%2520analysis%2520on%2520semisimple%2520lie%2520groups&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false%20%22Varadarajan%20-%20An%20introduction%20to%20harmonic%20analysis%20on%20semisimple%20Lie%20groups%22