This collection of nearly forty essays in honor of the noted physicist and cosmologist Engelbert Schucking spans the gamut of research in Einsteins theory of general relativity and presents a lively and personal account of current work in the field. Indispensable for physicists involved in research in the field, the book includes important chapters by noted theorists such as A. Ashtekar, P.G. Bergmann, J. Ehlers, E.T. Newman, J.V. Narlikar, R. Penrose, D.W. Sciama, J. Stachel, and W. Rindler.

This collection of nearly forty essays in honor of the noted physicist and cosmologist Engelbert Schucking spans the gamut of research in Einsteins theory of general relativity and presents a lively and personal account of current work in the field. Indispensable for physicists involved in research in the field, the book includes important chapters by noted theorists such as A. Ashtekar, P.G. Bergmann, J. Ehlers, E.T. Newman, J.V. Narlikar, R. Penrose, D.W. Sciama, J. Stachel, and W. Rindler.

Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits’ career, when he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones (1983). Starting his song-writing career in the ’70s, Waits absorbed la’s wealth of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac and Bukowski with jazz-blues rhythms, he explored the city’s literary and film noir traditions to create hallucinatory dreamscapes. Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination. Mixing the domestic with the mythic, Waits turned quotidian, autobiographical details into something more disturbing and emblematic; a vision of la as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal explorations.