join queries

Hi,

I have a query which seems like it should easy, but isnt.  I have two
tables, a and b that look like this:

a)

 id | c1
--+--
  1 | a
  2 | b
  3 | c

b)

 id | c2
--+--
  2 | b

and I would like to do a query which returns

 id | c1 | c2
--+--+--
  1 | a  |
  2 | b  | b
  3 | c  |

The simplest thing I could find was

SELECT a.*, (SELECT b.c2 WHERE a.id=b.id) AS c2;

This works, but is extremely slow for more complex examples.  Is there a
better way to do this in postgresql??  I think MS Access has inner and
outer joins to solve this problem.  Is there a postgresql equivalent?

Thanks for the help.

David Kaplan