From the Introduction: " Marston Morse was born in 1892, so that he was 33 years old when in 1925 his paper Relations between the critical points of a real-valued function of n independent variables appeared in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. Thus Morse grew to maturity just at the time when the subject of Analysis Situs was being shaped by such masters as Poincare, Veblen, L. E. J. Brouwer, G. D. Birkhoff, Lefschetz and Alexander, and it was Morse's genius and destiny to discover one of the most beautiful and far-reaching relations between this fledgling and Analysis; a relation which is now known as Morse Theory. In retrospect all great ideas take on a certain simplicity and inevitability, partly because they shape the whole subsequent development of the subject. And so to us, today, Morse Theory seems natural and inevitable. This whole flight of ideas was of course acclaimed by the mathematical World...it eventually earned him practically every honor of the mathematical community, over twenty honorary degrees, the National Science Medal, the Legion of Honor of France, ..."

Developed from a first-year graduate course in algebraic topology, this text is an informal introduction to some of the main ideas of contemporary homotopy and cohomology theory. The materials are structured around four core areas: de Rham theory, the Cech-de Rham complex, spectral sequences, and characteristic classes. By using the de Rham theory of differential forms as a prototype of cohomology, the machineries of algebraic topology are made easier to assimilate. With its stress on concreteness, motivation, and readability, this book is equally suitable for self-study and as a one-semester course in topology.

Developed from a first-year graduate course in algebraic topology, this text is an informal introduction to some of the main ideas of contemporary homotopy and cohomology theory. The materials are structured around four core areas: de Rham theory, the Cech-de Rham complex, spectral sequences, and characteristic classes. By using the de Rham theory of differential forms as a prototype of cohomology, the machineries of algebraic topology are made easier to assimilate. With its stress on concreteness, motivation, and readability, this book is equally suitable for self-study and as a one-semester course in topology.