The antidote to topology classes like Spivak, this book was written as an alternative to the subject. The learner will have some hands-on experience with geometric topology as a result of participating in this activity. In the past, the only type of topology a first-year student would be exposed to was point-set topology at a relatively abstract level.
The typical student’s next course would be a graduate course in algebraic topology. Such courses are typically homological, providing students with easy access to current research but not fostering any intuition or geometric sense in the student.
The exercises are to be seen as an essential component of the text and, ideally, should be tackled at the point in the material where they are presented rather than being saved for the conclusion of a section of content. A good number of them are pretty simple, and their purpose is to provide the learner with an opportunity to gain experience dealing with definitions and digesting the current topic before moving on. The appendix presents a concise overview of the necessary group theory.
