I would like to thank several people for their concrete contributions to this project. Ricky Bradley built up the substantial infrastructure required for both the WWW site and CD-ROM in a logical and extensible manner. Zhong Li did a spectacular job drawing most of the catalog figures using xfig and entering the lecture notes that served as the foundation of Part I of this book. Frank Ruscica, Kenneth McNicholas and Dario Vlah all came up big in the pinch, redoing all the audio and helping as the completion deadline approached. Filip Bujanic, David Ecker, David Gerstl, Jim Klosowski, Ted Lin, Kostis Sagonas, Kirsten Starcher, Brian Tria, and Lei Zhao all made contributions at various stages of the project.
Richard Crandall, Ron Danielson, Takis Metaxas, Dave Miller, Giri Narasimhan, and Joe Zachary all reviewed preliminary versions of the manuscript and/or CD-ROM; their thoughtful feedback helped to shape what you see here. Thanks also to Allan Wylde, the editor of my previous book as well as this one, and Keisha Sherbecoe and Robert Wexler of Springer-Verlag.
I learned much of what I know about algorithms along with my graduate students Yaw-Ling Lin, Sundaram Gopalakrishnan, Ting Chen, Francine Evans, Harald Rau, Ricky Bradley, and Dimitris Margaritis. They are the real heroes of many of the war stories related within. Much of the rest I have learned with my Stony Brook friends and colleagues Estie Arkin and Joe Mitchell, who have always been a pleasure to work and be with.
Finally, I'd like to send personal thanks to several people. Mom, Dad, Len, and Rob all provided moral support. Michael Brochstein took charge of organizing my social life, thus freeing time for me to actually write the book. Through his good offices I met Renee. Her love and patience since then have made it all worthwhile.