A list on more or less outdated books for general background
For the first part on classical black holes any book on classical aspects of gravity will do. Useful, in parts, are:

• Wald, General Relativty, Chicago 1984
• MTW, Gravitation, Freeman Company, 70s
• Ellis and Hawking, The large scale structure of space-time, Cambridge Press, 1973

Singularity Theorems
Other than the three general references above a further early elementary reference is

• R.Penrose, Techniques of differential topology in relativity, regional conference series in applied mathematics, 1972

Uniqueness Theorems
An amusing, sort of minimal, set of the old papers working up to the uniqueness theorem of the Kerr-Newman black hole in the Einstein-Maxwell theory are the following

• W.Israel, Event Horizons in Static Vacuum Space Times, Phys.Rev. 164(1967)1776
• F.Ernst, New Formulation of the Axially Symmetric Gravitational Field Problem, Phys.Rev. 167(1968)166
• B.Carter, Axisymmetric Black Hole Has Only Two Degrees of Freedom, Phys.Rev.Lett. 26(1971)331
• D.C. Robinson, Uniqueness of the Kerr Black Hole, Phys.Rev.Lett. 34(1975)905
• P.O. Mazur, Proof of Uniqueness of the Kerr-Newman black hole, J.Phys. A15(1982)3173

Part II: First physical considerations of black holes

• Black hole mechanics: Bardeen, Carter and Hawking, CMP (1972)
• Black hole thermodynamics: Bekenstein, Phys.Rev. D7(1973)

• Thorne, Black holes and time warps: Einstein's outrageous legacy, Picador, 1994 (non-technical book)
• Bekenstein, Physics Today 1980

Part III: Hawking radiation and the factor 1/4
Books on semi-classical aspects of gravity:

• Wald, Quantum field theory in curved space-time and black hole thermodynamics, Chicago Press, 1995
• Fulling, Aspects of quantum field theory in curved space-time, Cambridge Press, 1989
• Birrell and Davies, Quantum fields on curved space, Cambridge Press, 1982

ASPECTS OF CURRENT WORK

Part IV:
Macroscopic aspects of Calabi-Yau black hole entropy in type II low energy effective field theory (outline and references) .

Part V
Braney structure of string theory

Relevant papers for specifics:

• Single p-Brane solutions in general, and in type IIA,B effective field theory in particular:
  Horowitz and Strominger, Nucl.Phys. B360(1991)197
  Duff, Khuri and Lu, String Solitons, Phys.Rept. 259(1995)213, hep-th/9412184
• Interacting p-branes, D-branes, BPS-behavior, bound states and supersymmetry breaking:
  Polchinski, Chaudhuri and Johnson, Notes on D-branes, hep-th/9602052
  Polchinski, TASI lectures on D-branes, hep-th/9611050

• Balasubramanian and Larsen, hep-th/9604189
  contains a simple example computation of an entropy computation for a 4D black hole.
• Behrnd and Mohaupt, hep-th/9611 and Maldacena, hep-th/9611
  describe the brane interpretation of the entropy of axion free Calabi-Yau black holes in M-theory/type II string theory.

• A very short intro to the problem:
  E.Witten: The holes are defined by strings, Nature 383(1996)215
• Review:
  G.Horowitz, The origin of black hole entropy in string theory, gr-qc/960404051
• Simplest paper:
  Horowitz and Strominger, Counting states near extremal black holes, hep-th/9602051
• First paper:
  Strominger and Vafa, Microscopic Origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy, Phys.Lett., hep-th/9601029

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