Aimed toward graduate students and research mathematicians, with minimal prerequisites this book provides a fresh take on Alexandrov geometry and explains the importance of CAT(0) geometry in geometric group theory. Beginning with an overview of fundamentals, definitions, and conventions, this book quickly moves forward to discuss the Reshetnyak gluing theorem and applies it to the billiards problems. The Hadamard–Cartan globalization theorem is explored and applied to construct exotic aspherical manifolds.

"Topology of Metric Spaces gives a very streamlined development of a course in metric space topology emphasizing only the most useful concepts, concrete spaces and geometric ideas to encourage geometric thinking, to treat this as a preparatory ground for a general topology course, to use this course as a surrogate for real analysis and to help the students gain some perspective of modern analysis." "Eminently suitable for self-study, this book may also be used as a supplementary text for courses in general (or point-set) topology so that students will acquire a lot of concrete examples of spaces and maps."--BOOK JACKET.