The Bright Side of the Hard X-ray Sky: The XMM-Newton Bright Survey

We discuss here the main goals and some interesting results of the "XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey", a research program conducted by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Center in two complementary energy bands (0.5-4.5 keV and 4.5-7.5 keV) in the bright (>~7E-14) flux regime. The very high identification rate (96%) for the X-ray source sample selected in the 4.5-7.5 keV band is used here to have, in this energy range, an "unbiased" view of the extragalactic hard X-ray sky at bright fluxes.