The different aspects of liquid state behavior currently in focus are classified in terms of their place in the range of relaxation times separating the microscopic (phonon) time from the structural relaxation time at the normal glass transition T g . The place within this scheme of each of the contributions to this symposium is identified. Special attention is given to the crossover between "free diffusion" and "landscape-dominated" regimes. Thermodynamic estimates of the "height of the landscape" are given for strong and fragile liquids and a correspondence is found between the thermodynamic estimate and characteristic temperatures T c of mode coupling theory and T x of Rössler scaling obtained from different analyses of the dynamic properties. Fragile liquids have all their configurational microstates (configurons) packed into a small energy band between kT K and the upper limit at kT u i.e. T u is relatively close to T K . In the landscapedominated regime, clustering occurs. We outline a cooperative cluster model which can generate high fragility and which in extreme cases can provoke a first-order phase transition to the fully clustered state.It is now becoming widely appreciated that systems which slow down with decreasing temperature (or increasing pressure) to the point where internal equilibrium is lost and only solid-like characteristics remain, are very widespread in nature and comprise some very important systems, both in physics and biology. It has further become evident that the problem of adequately describing and accounting for the ergodicity breaking process is a profound one. The contributions to this volume, which records many of the contributions to the challenging symposium on the subject organized by John Fourkas, Udayan Mohanty, Keith Nelson and Daniel Kivelson for the Fall meeting of the ACS, provide a well-rounded description of the key elements of this currently exciting problem area for a particular but very important case of this phenomenology. This is the case in which the elements which "get stuck" in the glassy state are atoms, molecules, or "beads" on a polymer or biopolymer chain.The most challenging aspects of the problem may be thought of as occurring in three very different domains of time. The first (and, to many, die most challenging) concerns the very short time domain in which these condensed systems first resolve the very chaotic motions characteristic of the dense gas and hot liquid states into separable components. The slow and (increasingly) temperature-dependent diffusive modes separate from fast oscillatory modes and the gap in characteristic time scales 14