In the Wen Zhou City Hospital in Zhe Jiang Province, there is a seventy-four-year-old doctor of Chinese medicine called Lin Hung Da. When he wants to, he can jump up from the ground and suspend himself in the air with only his hands touching a wall.

Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of “white trash” in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of the native American people.

And then you feel all round your pocket and fish out that absurd little thing, all by itself, sticking on the end of your finger like a tiddleywink. The shop-girl sniffs. She spots immediately that it's your last threepence in the world.

This book is designed to develop the fundamental concepts of general topology which are the basic tools of working mathematicians in a variety of fields.