1. The First Week: We Have Coherence 1
2. Reservations and Complications: Malicious Injections? 17
3. Half a Century of Gravitational Wave Detection 49
4. Weeks 2 and 3: The Freeze, Rumors 57
5. Week 4: The Box Is Opened 75
6. Week 5 to the End of October: Directness, Black Holes 87
7. November: Ripples, Belief, and Second Monday 113
8. November: Writing the Discovery Paper 131
9. December, Weeks 12-16: The Proof Regress, Relentless Professionalism, and the Third Event 173
10. January and February: The LVC-Wide Meetings and the Submission 195
11. The Last Ripples: From the Press Conferences to the American Physical Society and the Rest of the World 225
12. Changing Order: The Long Aha! 255
13. On the Nature of Science 289
14. The Book, the Author, the Community, and Expertise 313
Postscript: The Beginning of Gravitational Wave Astronomy 325
How the Book Was Written and Those Who Helped 343
Sociological and Philosophical Notes 349
Appendix 1 Procedure for Making a First Discovery 377
Appendix 2 First Draft of the Discovery Paper without Author List or Bibliography 383
Appendix 3 Rules for Author Lists 395
References 397
Index 403