diff --git a/Makefile.am b/Makefile.am
index 7ba1b78..912916a 100644
--- a/Makefile.am
+++ b/Makefile.am
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
 
-EXTRA_DIST = README.rst
+EXTRA_DIST = NEWS.rst README.rst
 
 # if doxygen is enabled include doc subdir
 if HAVE_DOXYGEN
diff --git a/NEWS.rst b/NEWS.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e8cf2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/NEWS.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+New in 0.2.1.9999:
+==================
+
+- added two examples showing the advanced use of the VEGAS integration routine
+- added a callback mechanism for the VEGAS routines; this enables one to print
+  intermediate results from completed iterations
+- added VEGAS routines to reuse an existing grid
+- grids can now be easily saved to files with iostream shift operators, see the
+  example 'examples/read_linear_grid.cpp' which can be used with the grid file
+  in 'examples/grid_file'
+
+New in 0.2.1:
+=============
+
+- added MPI-parallelized PLAIN integration algorithm
+- lowered dependency on autotools features
+
+New in 0.2:
+===========
+
+- added new functions for combining several VEGAS results
+- added MPI-based paralellized VEGAS integration algorithm
+- improved documentation
+- improved VEGAS performance
+
+New in 0.1:
+===========
+
+- added PLAIN integrator
+- added VEGAS integrator
diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index fd9a474..df83950 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -2,23 +2,48 @@ Project Description
 ===================
 
 ``hep-mc`` is a C++11 template library providing Monte Carlo integration
-algorithms, currently only PLAIN and VEGAS.
+algorithms, currently only PLAIN and VEGAS. In addition, this library comes with
+MPI-parallelized routines.
+
+The aim of this project is to provide functions and classes that are:
+
+- *easily usable*, e.g. the default VEGAS routine can be called with only three
+  parameters. More can be given if the default parameters are not satisfactory,
+- *templatized* in order to support a wide range of floating point types used to
+  perform the numerical computations (e.g. ``float``, ``double``,
+  ``long double`` and custom types),
+- *modularized* which makes it easy to develop new integration algorithms on top
+  of known ones - e.g. VEGAS with a modified rebinning algorithm,
+- *compatible* to the new C++11 random number generators [1]_. As a side effect,
+  it is possible to write and use custom generators, e.g. to generate
+  quasi-random numbers.
+
+Furthermore, for VEGAS
+
+- one can specify the sample size for each iteration separately; afterwards
+- one can selectively include/exclude each iteration's result in a cumulative
+  estimate,
+- it is possible to set the bin count to study its effect on the precision for
+  complicated integrands, for example. In other VEGAS implementations the bin
+  count is set to a fixed number, e.g. 50 in GSL and 128 in CUBA.
 
 Installation and Testing
 ========================
 
-hep-mc is a header-only library which requires no compilation. To install it,
-use the usual sequence of commands for autotools-based projects, for example::
+``hep-mc`` is a header-only library which requires no compilation. To install
+it, use the usual sequence of commands for autotools-based projects, for
+example::
 
     ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-doxygen
     make
     make install
 
-This will generate the Doxygen documentation for this library first and installs
-it in the second step to /usr/local/doc/hep-ga. The headers are installed to
-/usr/local/include. You may change these directories by specifying additional
-options to ./configure. The following command gives you a complete list of
-available configuration options::
+The ``prefix`` specifies the directory in which the library will be installed
+to. If you enable Doxygen, ``make`` will generate the HTML documentation for
+this library which will be installed as well. Note that you need a recent
+version of this program [2]_.
+
+A complete list of configuration options is available by typing::
 
     ./configure --help
 
@@ -30,10 +55,8 @@ by autotools ...
 
 - run ``autoreconf -fiv`` to generate the files which are not under revision
   control
-- if the last step failed, your autotools are most likely outdated. Update
+- if the last step fails, your autotools are most likely outdated. Update
   autoconf and automake and try again.
 
-Usage
-=====
-
-See Doxygen documentation.
+.. [1] See e.g. http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/numeric/random
+.. [2] http://www.doxygen.org/