Description

Exploring the full scope of differential topology, this comprehensive account of geometric techniques for studying the topology of smooth manifolds offers a wide perspective on the field. Building up from first principles, concepts of manifolds are introduced, supplemented by thorough appendices giving background on topology and homotopy theory. Deep results are then developed from these foundations through in-depth treatments of the notions of general position and transversality, proper actions of Lie groups, handles (up to the h-cobordism theorem), immersions and embeddings, concluding with the surgery procedure and cobordism theory. Fully illustrated and rigorous in its approach, little prior knowledge is assumed, and yet growing complexity is instilled throughout. This structure gives advanced students and researchers an accessible route into the wide-ranging field of differential topology.

Description

…there are reasons enough to warrant a coherent treatment of the main body of differential topology in the realm of Banach manifolds, which is at the same time correct and complete. This book fills the gap: whenever possible the manifolds treated are Banach manifolds with corners. Corners add to the complications and the authors have carefully fathomed the validity of all main results at corners. Even in finite dimensions some results at corners are more complete and better thought out here than elsewhere in the literature. The proofs are correct and with all details. I see this book as a reliable monograph of a well-defined subject; the possibility to fall back to it adds to the feeling of security when climbing in the more dangerous realms of infinite dimensional differential geometry.

Peter W. Michor