This Handbook is intended for readers with some knowledge of Geometric Topology (or
even only certain limited aspects of the subject) and with an interest in learning more. It
was put together in the hope and belief that graduate students in particular would find it
useful. Among other features, it offers perspectives on matters closely studied in times past,
such as PL topology, infinite-dimensional topology, and group actions on manifolds, and it
presents several chapters on matters of intense interest at the time it was assembled, near
the beginning of a new millenium, such as geometric group theory and 3-manifolds (knot
theory included) and their invariants. It includes current treatments of vital topics such as
cohomological dimension theory, fixed point theory, homology manifolds, invariants of
high-dimensional manifolds, mapping class groups, structures on manifolds and topological dynamics. Unfortunately the editors were not able to obtain appropriate coverage of
recent important developments in the theory of 4-manifolds.