Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data will

be found on the last printed page of this bookFOREWORD These five essays consolidate several parts of the subject of topological manifolds that were brought within reach by our two short articles [Ki 1] and [KS 1] published in 1969. Many of the theorems proved here were announced by us in [KS 3 1 [KS 4] [SilO]. Certainly we have not labored in isolation; our bibliography bears clear testimony to this! Preliminary versions of segmen ts of these essays (particularly Essay I) have been in limited circulation since early 1970. Polycopied versions of all five were released in August 1972 (from Orsay), and reissued in November 1973. The final camera-ready manuscript was prepared by the second author, Wanda Jones, and Arlene Spurlo~k during 1974 and 1975 using the IBM selectric composer system (hitherto exploited but little by mathematicians, cf. [Whole, p. 435] ). G. Blattmann inked the drawings