Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Like a patchwork quilt made from family memories, Simple Annals is an American saga that spans two centuries, from Revolutionary times to the present day. In the tradition of Robert Frost and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, Robert Allen has documented in prose and poetry the folklore and history of his Tennessee clan. More absorbing than any dry recounting of the tragedies and triumphs of the Allen family could be, this unique album-in-words sings of war heroes, farmers, God, graveyards, and violent death; of "hoop snakes" and ghosts; hard times and occasional, fleeting moments of joy and celebration. It chronicles the American Revolution, the Civil War - Tennessee, where Allen's ancestors fought for the Union, saw some of the most savage border fighting - and Allen's own extraordinary personal leap from backwoods poverty to life as a university professor.

This volume describes the current state of knowledge of random spatial processes, particularly those arising in physics. The emphasis is on survey articles which describe areas of current interest to probabilists and physicists working on the probability theory of phase transition. Special attention is given to topics deserving further research. The principal contributions by leading researchers concern the mathematical theory of random walk, interacting particle systems, percolation, Ising and Potts models, spin glasses, cellular automata, quantum spin systems, and metastability. The level of presentation and review is particularly suitable for postgraduate and postdoctoral workers in mathematics and physics, and for advanced specialists in the probability theory of spatial disorder and phase transition.