* 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