Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)

Rating:
Summary: Good, as long as you have enough background
Review: I read this book at the very beginning of my studying in differential geometry and was striked. The definitions and methods used in this book seemed totally incomprehensible to me. However, after some development in this field, I found that this book is very concise. It is a very good surey on differential geometry but not a good book to start with. Definitions are given from the most "down to bottom" one. It is a very good attitude, yet, if you do not have much background in differential geometry, this book may takes you several days in order to understand the concept of tensor and exterior algebra.

Rating:
Summary: A good book if you have some background
Review: This book is a good introduction to manifolds and lie groups.
Still if you dont have any background ,this is not the book to start with.The first chapter is about the basics of manifolds:vector fields,lie brackts,flows on manifolds and more,
this chapter can help one alot as a second book on the subject.
The second chapter is about tensors, this introduction can be very hard for someone who didnt met the notion of tensors ,since the book tends to take a very general line with out down to earth examples.the 3ed chapter is about lie groups.It is avery good introduction ,to my point of view ,one of the best there is.
The 4th chapter is about integration on manifolds and is very good too.Chapters 5and6 are about De Rham cohomology theory and the hodge theorem.
If you have some knowledge on all the above subjects this book can serve as a very good overview on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: This review refers only to the book printing quality not to the contents.

I had purchased some books from Springer in the past (Like Arnold Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, Lang Algebra etc..) and found them beautifully edited: good binding, paper etc..

And to my surprise I was very disappointed with the overall quality of this book, poor binding -glued instead of sewn- bad quality paper -forming waves at the binding spine, etc..

You pay for a quality item, a book you can use for years, and you get a hardbound crap that you can not left open in a table without holding it tight risking to lose the pages after a few days of use in the process.

I find this unacceptable in books costing 60$+. Sadly I find this to occur very often, publishers should be more careful with their printings and custumers should demand a better quality.

Don't waste your money.

A reader.