diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 7c83c50..574f768 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -4,9 +4,42 @@ This is an implementation of left-right concurrency control in C++. The
 concurrency control mechanism is by Pedro Ramalhete and Andreia Correia. My
 contribution is solely an implementation that makes use of modern C++ features.
 
-As I write this, papers on this concurrency control technique are forthcoming,
-for the time being the best reference is probably
+As I write this, papers on this concurrency control technique are forthcoming.
+For the time being the best reference is probably
 http://concurrencyfreaks.blogspot.com/2013/12/left-right-concurrency-control.html
 
-This is a header-only library. Simply put the leftright.hpp file somewhere in
-that your C++ compiler can find it and you're good to go.
+This is a header-only library. Put the leftright.hpp file somewhere that your
+C++ compiler can find it and you're good to go.
+
+## Summary of features
+
+The basic idea is to provide a class template that can wrap _any_ other
+class so as to provide wait-free population-oblivious concurrent read accesses
+without requiring the complexities of SMR. The cost of the left-right mechanism
+is two-fold: (1) the memory requirements for your datastructure double because
+two copies of it are kept, and (2) updates are threadsafe but are blocking (but
+still do not interfere with reads). Consequently this class and left-right in
+general is best used for small data structures where reads dominate writes.
+
+You can see usage examples in the unit tests. There are really only two member
+functions on the leftright class template: observe and modify. The observe
+function takes a unary functor and executes it, providing it a const reference
+to the underlying datastructure. The modify function takes a noexcept unary
+function and executes (twice) against a non-const reference to the underlying
+datastructure. It is vitally important that the functors provided to the modify
+function be deterministic and make exactly the same modifications to the
+datastructure for each invocation.
+
+## Building
+
+There's really no build needed as this is a header-only library, however if you
+want to run the unit tests or generate docs you can use the cmake build. To
+perform an out-of-tree build
+
+    $ cd /tmp # or wherever
+    $ mkdir leftright-debug
+    $ cd leftright-debug
+    $ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debug /path/to/leftright/repository
+    $ make && make test
+    $ make docs # generates doxygen documentation under /tmp/leftright-debug/docs
+    
diff --git a/include/mpm/leftright.hpp b/include/mpm/leftright.hpp
index 96800b6..03497dd 100644
--- a/include/mpm/leftright.hpp
+++ b/include/mpm/leftright.hpp
@@ -29,12 +29,12 @@ namespace mpm
     //! R, an implementation of the ReaderRegistry concept \n
     //! r, an instance of R
     //!
-    //! |Expression  | Requirements        | Return type |
-    //! |:-----------|:--------------------|:------------|
-    //! | R()        | R is default constructible | R    |
-    //! | r.arrive() | Notes the arival of a reader. wait-free and noexcept | |
-    //! | r.depart() | Notes the departure of a reader. wait-free and noexcept | |
-    //! | r.empty()  | const and noexcept | true if there are zero readers; false otherwise. |
+    //! |Expression  | Requirements                                            | Return type                                      |
+    //! |:-----------|:--------------------------------------------------------|:-------------------------------------------------|
+    //! | R()        | R is default constructible                              | R                                                |
+    //! | r.arrive() | Notes the arival of a reader. wait-free and noexcept    |                                                  |
+    //! | r.depart() | Notes the departure of a reader. wait-free and noexcept |                                                  |
+    //! | r.empty()  | const and noexcept                                      | true if there are zero readers; false otherwise. |
     //! \}
 
     struct in_place_t {};