  With current terrestrial gravitational wave detectors working at initial
design sensitivities, and upgrades and space missions planned, it is likely
that in the next five to ten years gravitational radiation will be detected
directly from a variety of classes of objects. The most confidently expected of
these classes is compact binaries, involving neutron stars or black holes.
Detection of their coalescence, or their long-term orbits, has the potential to
inform us about the evolutionary history of compact binaries and possibly even
star formation over the past several billion years. We review what is currently
known about compact binaries as sources of gravitational radiation, as well as
the current uncertainties and what we expect to learn from future detections of
gravitational waves from these systems.
