These reports, at the forefront of relativity theory when they were written, in particular the geometrical aspects of spacetime theory, were the result of the Alfred Schild Memorial Lecture Series presented at the University of Texas at Austin beginning in 1977. Each article is a self-contained summary of an important area of contemporary gravitational physics, while the book as a whole provides an overview of a wide variety of the problems of general relativity and gravitation.

• Preface
• 1. Why Is the Universe So Symmetrical? (Dennis Sciama)
• 2. Null Congruences and Plebanski-Schild Spaces (Ivor Robinson)
• 3. Linearization Stability (Dieter Brill)
• 4. Nonlinear Model Field Theories Based on Harmonic Mappings (Charles W. Misner)
• 5. Gravitational Fields in General Relativity (Roy P. Kerr)
• 6. On the Potential Barriers Surrounding the Schwarzschild Black Hole
• (Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar)
• 7. The Initial Value Problem and Beyond (James W. York, Jr., and Tsvi Piran)
• Notes on Contributors
• Index to Works Cited
• Index of Topics