Customer Reviews

Algebraic Topology

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is terrific as a reference for those who already know the subject, but if you teach algebraic topology it would be dangerous to use it as a graduate text (unless you're willing to supplement it extensively). The basic problem is that Spanier does not teach students how to compute effectively because his abstract, high-powered algebraic approach obscures the underlying geometry, which is not developed at all. Here I'd recommend the books by Munkres, or Greenberg; even the old-fashioned treatment of Lefschetz, with its explicit and rather cumbersome treatment of cohomology, could serve as an antidote to Spanier. Somewhere, the student has to acquire a good intuitive feeling for the geometry underlying the subject (the same can be said of algebraic geometry -- here earlier work (e.g., of the Italian school, Weil's old book on intersection theory, ...) should not be neglected entirely in favor of Grothendieck et al., for something essential is lost)

That said, if you already know the subject Spanier's book is an excellent reference. Even here, though, you'll need to provide some details toward the ends of the later chapters. Each chapter starts out relatively easily and works up to a crescendo, the treatment becoming terser and more advanced.

I give it four stars (5 for mathematical quality, 3 for usefulness as a text). The first three chapters deal with covering spaces and fibrations; the middle three with (co)homology and duality; the last three with general homotopy theory, obstruction theory, and spectral sequences. Some of Serre's classical results on finiteness theorems for homotopy groups are presented.

This book was an incredible step forward when it was written (1962-1963). Lefschetz's Algebraic Topology (Colloquium Pbns. Series, Vol 27) was the main text at the time. A large number of other good to great books on the subject have appeared since then, so a review for current readers needs to address two separate issues: its suitability as a textbook and its mathematical content.

I took the course from Mr. Spanier at Berkeley a decade after the text was written. He was a fantastic teacher - one of the two best I've ever had (the other taught nonlinear circuit theory). We did NOT use this text, except as a reference and problem source. He had pretty much abandonded the extreme abstract categorical approach by then. The notes I have follow the topical pattern of the book, but are so modified as to be essentially a different book, especially after covering spaces and the first homotopy group. His statement was that his treatment had changed since the subject had changed significantly. So much more has changed since then that I would not recommend this book as a primary text these days. Bredon's Topology and Geometry (Graduate Texts in Mathematics) is much better suited to today's student.

So, why did I give it four stars? First, notice that it splits stylewise into three segments, corresponding the treatment of its material in a three quarter academic year. The first three chapters (intro, covering spaces, polyhedral) have really not been superceded in a beginning text. Topics are covered very thoroughly, aiding the student new to the subject. The next three chapters (homology) are written much with much less explanation included - indeed, some areas leave much to the reader to discover and, consequently, aren't very helpful if the instructor doesn't fill in the details (the text expects a rather rapid mathematical maturation from the first part - too much of a ramp in my opinion), but the text is comprehensive. The last section (homotopy theory, obstruction theory and spectral sequences) should just be treated as a reference - it'd be hard to find all this material in such a compact form elsewhere and the obstruction theory section has fantastic coverage of what was known as of the writing of this book. It's way too terse for a novice to learn from and there are some great books out there these days on the material.

Spanier's book is a wonderful treatment of many important ideas in algebraic topology, from covering spaces to Cech Cohomology. However, the going is difficult for those not initiated into the basic ideas. The proofs are correct, but often too terse for graduate students. It would also be nice if there were more explicit examples in the text, as in Greenberg and Harper's book, for example. There are plentiful exercises that go deep into the theoretical aspects of the subject. I use this book as a reference for my research and for that purpose it is excellent!

This book is a highly advanced and very formal treatment of algebraic topology and meant for researchers who already have considerable background in the subject. A category-theoretic functorial point of view is stressed throughout the book, and the author himself states that the title of the book could have been "Functorial Topology". It serves best as a reference book, although there are problem sets at the end of each chapter.

After a brief introduction to set theory, general topology, and algebra, homotopy and the fundamental group are covered in Chapter 1. Categories and functors are defined, and some examples are given, but the reader will have to consult the literature for an in-depth discussion. Homotopy is introduced as an equivalence class of maps between topological pairs. Fixing a base point allows the author to define H-spaces, but he does not motivate the real need for using pointed spaces, namely as a way of obtaining the composition law for the loops in the fundamental group. By suitable use of the reduced join, reduced product, and reduced suspension, the author shows how to obtain H-groups and H co-groups. The fundamental group is defined in the last section of the chapter, and the author does clarify the non-uniqueness of the fundamental group based at different points of a path-connected space.

Covering spaces and fibrations are discussed in the next chapter. The author does a fairly good job of discussing these, and does a very good job of motivating the definition of a fiber bundle as a generalized covering space where the "fiber" is not discrete. The fundamental group is used to classify covering spaces.

In chapter 3 the author gets down to the task of computing the fundamental group of a space using polyhedra. Although this subject is intensely geometrical. only six diagrams are included in the discussion.

Homology is introduced via a categorical approach in the next chapter. Singular homology on the category of topological pairs and simplicial homology on the category of simplicial pairs. The author begins the chapter with a nice intuitive discussion, but then quickly runs off to an extremely abstract definition-theorem-proof treatment of homology theory. The discussion reads like one straight out of a book on homological algebra.

This approach is even more apparent in the next chapter, where homology theory is extended to general coefficient groups. The Steenrod squaring operations, which have a beautiful geometric interpretation, are instead treated in this chapter as cohomology operations. The logic used is impeccable but the real understanding gained is severely lacking.

General cohomology theory is treated in the next chapter with the duality between homology and cohomology investigated via the slant product. Characteristic classes, so important in applications, are discussed using algebraic constructions via the cup product and Steenrod squares. Characteristic classes do have a nice geometric interpretation, but this is totally masked in the discussion here.

The higher homotopy groups and CW complexes are discussed in Chapter 7, but again, the functorial approach used here totally obscures the underlying geometrical constructions.

Obstruction theory is the subject of Chapter8, with Eilenberg-Maclane spaces leading off the discussion. The author does give some motivation in the first few paragraphs on how obstructions arise as an impediment to a lifting of a map, but an explicit, concrete example is what is needed here.

The last chapter covers spectral sequences as applied to homotopy groups of spheres. More homological algebra again, and the same material could be obtained (and in more detail) in a book on that subject.

This book is terrific as a reference for those who already know the subject, but if you teach algebraic topology it would be dangerous to use it as a graduate text (unless you're willing to supplement it extensively). The basic problem is that Spanier does not teach students how to compute effectively because his abstract, high-powered algebraic approach obscures the underlying geometry, which is not developed at all. Here I'd recommend the books by Munkres, or Greenberg; even the old-fashioned treatment of Lefschetz, with its explicit and rather cumbersome treatment of cohomology, could serve as an antidote to Spanier. Somewhere, the student has to acquire a good intuitive feeling for the geometry underlying the subject (the same can be said of algebraic geometry -- here earlier work (e.g., of the Italian school, Weil's old book on intersection theory, ...) should not be neglected entirely in favor of Grothendieck et al., for something essential is lost)

That said, if you already know the subject Spanier's book is an excellent reference. Even here, though, you'll need to provide some details toward the ends of the later chapters. Each chapter starts out relatively easily and works up to a crescendo, the treatment becoming terser and more advanced.

I give it four stars (5 for mathematical quality, 3 for usefulness as a text). The first three chapters deal with covering spaces and fibrations; the middle three with (co)homology and duality; the last three with general homotopy theory, obstruction theory, and spectral sequences. Some of Serre's classical results on finiteness theorems for homotopy groups are presented.

I gave Spanier only three stars not because I think it is a bad book: as the previous two reviewers have pointed out, Spanier is a comprehensive (and still good) account of the subject, but is by no means for beginners. Now that more user-frinedly ones like Bredon, Fomenko-Novikov, and Hatcher (forthcoming) are available, it would hardly justify giving it four or five stars. And for reference purposes, there is a small (and sometimes too terse) but attractive account by May that covers topics not touched by Spanier.