Differential Topology (2nd ed.)

This book presents a systematic and comprehensive account of the theory of differentiable manifolds and provides the necessary background for the use of fundamental differential topology tools. The text includes, in particular, the earlier works of Stephen Smale, for which he was awarded the Fields Medal. Explicitly, the topics covered are Thom transversality, Morse theory, theory of handle presentation, h-cobordism theorem and the generalised Poincaré conjecture. The material is the outcome of