Sheaf Theory (Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 170)

Primarily concerned with the study of cohomology theories of general topological spaces with "general coefficient systems", the parts of sheaf theory covered here are those areas important to algebraic topology. Among the many innovations in this book, the concept of the "tautness" of a subspace is introduced and exploited; the fact that sheaf theoretic cohomology satisfies the homotopy property is proved for general topological spaces; and relative cohomology is introduced into sheaf theory. A list of exercises at the end of each chapter helps students to learn the material, and solutions to many of the exercises are given in an appendix. This new edition of a classic has been substantially rewritten and now includes some 80 additional examples and further explanatory material, as well as new sections on Cech cohomology, the Oliver transfer, intersection theory, generalised manifolds, locally homogeneous spaces, homological fibrations and p- adic transformation groups. Readers should have a thorough background in elementary homological algebra and in algebraic topology.