Why are Braids Orderable?

Book excerpt: In the decade since the discovery that Artin's braid groups enjoy a left-invariant linear ordering, several quite different approaches have been applied to understand this phenomenon. This book is an account of those approaches, involving self-distributive algebra, uniform finite trees, combinatorial group theory, mapping class groups, laminations, and hyperbolic geometry. This volume is suitable for graduate students and research mathematicians interested in algebra and topology.