The Geometry of Four-Manifolds

The last ten years have seen rapid advances in the understanding of differentiable four-manifolds, not least of which has been the discovery of new 'exotic' manifolds. These results have had far-reaching consequences in geometry, topology, and mathematical physics, and have proven to be a mainspring of current mathematical research. This book provides a lucid and accessible account of the modern study of the geometry of four-manifolds.