Reviewer Briefing

REQUESTS AND WARNINGS
about files on the dropsite exploringblackholes.com

The dropsite

http://exploringblackholes.com

contains some of the latest drafts of the Second Edition of the textbook Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity by authors Edmund Bertschinger, Edwin F. Taylor, and John Archibald Wheeler, to be published by Pearson Addison Wesley of San Francisco, CA, USA. We would very much appreciate your comments, criticisms, and suggestions. Please send these to Taylor at eftaylor@mit.edu Two requests and two warnings:

• REQUEST NUMBER ONE: Please include in your email the COMPLETE FILE NAME of the file on which you are commenting. Files are replaced often, and the only way we know what you are talking about is to know the COMPLETE file name. At the top of every page is the file name of the form FileNameYYMMDDv# For example, the file name Map080923v3 means "the third version of the Map Project that was created on 23 September 2008."
• REQUEST NUMBER TWO: Please label each comment with the LINE NUMBER or range of line numbers on which you are commenting. That pinpoints the place in the text to which we should go to install your corrections and improvements. Of course, line numbers get pushed around from one draft to the next, so line numbers are almost useless if you do not give us also the complete file name! (See request number one.)

• WARNING NUMBER ONE: These are drafts. Obviously errors remain. Don't blame us; help us! You will also find new figures indicated and described but not yet drawn and NOTES to ourselves (USUALLY IN CAPS) that remind us of questions or future plans. Please feel free to give us your advice and ideas on these unfinished items as well.
• WARNING NUMBER TWO: Edmund Bertschinger is Head of the Physics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so he is busy in many ways. Taylor is often left to charge ahead with what he thinks Bertschinger has in mind. Sometimes this turns out not to be what Bertschinger has in mind. Most files on this website are a mix of competent and proposed material.

The first edition can be found on this web site.

Thank you for your help,

Edmund Bertschinger
Edwin Taylor
eftaylor@mit.edu
September 2008