Acknowledgments

There are many individuals who played an important role in the production of
this book. First and foremost I thank Raman Uppal, not only for his invaluable
contribution to the first book but also for the discussions about how to structure
a new version, for translating the text parts of the old manuscript into LaTeX,
and setting up a master file system to produce the whole. Thanks also to the
former and current doctoral students or assistants who read earlier drafts of the first
and second book and suggested several improvements: Badrinath H. R., Thi Ngoc
Tuan Bui, Katelijne Carbonez, C ́edric de Ville de Goyet, Kathy Dehoper ́e, Marian
Kane, Fang Liu, Rosanne Vanp ́ee, Tom Vinaimont, and Xueping Wu. Marian,
especially, did lots of work on the exercises, and Katelijne on the revised text.
Prof. Martina Vandebroek occasionally helped with spreadsheets and graphs, at
which she Excels; she, Fang Liu and Badrinath H. R. provided the empirical results
for Chapters 10 and 11. Many thanks, lastly, to colleagues who read drafts and
provided comments, some of them at Princeton’s request but some even of their
free will: Hu Shengmei, Karen Lewis, Bernard Dumas, Stan Standaert, Charles van
Wymeersch, and an anonymous (but wholly positive) referee reporting to Princeton
UP. Of course, I remain responsible for all remaining errors. Comments and feedback
from readers about errors, presentation, and contents are very welcome: do email
[email protected].

I dedicate this book to my parents, Jan Sercu and the late T ́er`ese Reynaert,
and to my wife Rita and children Maarten and Jorinde, who have patiently put up
with my inattentive absent-mindedness during the time it has taken to complete
this project and, come to think of it, most of the time before and after.

December 2007

vii