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.

To Port Natal in 1839 came Adulphe Delegorgue, a young French naturalist with a passion for information, a keen eye and a ready wit . . . and a mighty elephant gun. This first volume of his famous Travels describes his brief jouneyings in the Cape Colony and the early part of his several years of hunting and specimen-collecting in Natal and Zululand. Fleur Webb's lively translation allows English readers, for the first time, to enjoy Delegorgue's' ebullience, and to see through his eyes the Port Natal settlement, Trekker life, and the pomp and pageantry of Mpande's court. An especial pleasure is his account of the plants and animals of Natal and Zululand, still fresh and unspoiled by pollution and destructive exploitation. Historian Colin Webb has provided an annotated general index and a preface assessing Delegorgue's importance as an observer of events at a moment of critical transition in south African history. An encyclopaedic natural history index has been compiled by zoologist Stephanie Alexander, who has also contributed a perceptive portrait of Delegorgue as a scientist. No other tale of hunting and adventure, no other account of Boers and Zulus, no other chronicle of travels in nineteenth century southern African offers the reader such a rich blend of history, biology, Gallic charm and vigorous entertainment.