* Presents extensive surveys by van den Ban, Schlichtkrull, and Delorme of the recent progress in deriving the Plancherel theorem on reductive symmetric spaces
* Well suited for both graduate students and researchers in semisimple Lie theory and neighboring fields, possibly even mathematical cosmology
* Knowledge of basic representation theory of Lie groups as well as familiarity with semisimple Lie groups, symmetric spaces, and parabolic subgroups is required