This book provides a detailed and largely self-contained description of various classical and new results on solvability and unsolvability of equations in explicit form. In particular, it offers a complete exposition of the relatively new area of topological Galois theory, initiated by the author. Applications of Galois theory to solvability of algebraic equations by radicals, basics of Picard-Vessiot theory, and Liouville's results on the class of functions representable by quadratures are also discussed. A unique feature of this book is that recent results are presented in the same elementary manner as classical Galois theory, which will make the book useful and interesting to readers with varied backgrounds in mathematics, from undergraduate students to researchers. In this English-language edition, extra material has been added (Appendices A-D), the last two of which were written jointly with Yura Burda.

The first part of this book provides an elementary and self-contained exposition of classical Galois theory and its applications to the questions of solvability of algebraic equations in explicit form. The second part describes a surprising analogy between the fundamental theorem of Galois theory and classification of coverings over a topological space. The third part contains a geometric description of finite algebraic extensions of the field of meromorphic functions on a Riemann surface and provides an introduction to topological Galois theory developed by the author. All results are presented in the same elementary and self-contained manner as classical Galois theory. Due to this feature, the book will be useful and interesting to readers with very different background in mathematics, from undergraduate students to researchers.

The so-called ""pinched disk'' model of the Mandelbrot set is due to A. Douady, J. H. Hubbard and W. P. Thurston. It can be described in the language of geodesic laminations. The combinatorial model is the quotient space of the unit disk under an equivalence relation that, loosely speaking, `""pinches""' the disk in the plane (whence the name of the model). The significance of the model lies in particular in the fact that this quotient is planar and therefore can be easily visualized. The conjecture that the Mandelbrot set is actually homeomorphic to this model is equivalent to the celebrated MLC conjecture stating that the Mandelbrot set is locally connected. For parameter spaces of higher degree polynomials no combinatorial model is known. One possible reason may be that the higher degree analog of the MLC conjecture is known to be false. The authors investigate to which extent a geodesic lamination is determined by the location of its critical sets and when different choices of critical sets lead to essentially the same lamination. This yields models of various parameter spaces of laminations similar to the ``pinched disk'' model of the Mandelbrot set.

This book provides a detailed and largely self-contained description of various classical and new results on solvability and unsolvability of equations in explicit form. In particular, it offers a complete exposition of the relatively new area of topological Galois theory, initiated by the author. Applications of Galois theory to solvability of algebraic equations by radicals, basics of Picard–Vessiot theory, and Liouville's results on the class of functions representable by quadratures are also discussed. A unique feature of this book is that recent results are presented in the same elementary manner as classical Galois theory, which will make the book useful and interesting to readers with varied backgrounds in mathematics, from undergraduate students to researchers. In this English-language edition, extra material has been added (Appendices A–D), the last two of which were written jointly with Yura Burda.