Book excerpt: Getting down to the bottom line is what this proceedings digest is all about, as any physicist will tell you: spin is the fundamental concept in physics. The applications are pretty universal due to the fact that, using spin-related phenomena, physicists are trying to reveal the fundamental principles of nature – and things don’t come much more bottom-line than that. This volume is the proceedings of the 17th International Spin Physics Symposium which is a forum to discuss spin physics and related topics.