This book combines the classical and contemporary approaches to
differential geometry. An introduction to the Riemannian geometry of
manifolds is preceded by a detailed discussion of properties of curves
and surfaces.
The chapter on the differential geometry of plane curves considers local
and global properties of curves, evolutes and involutes, and affine and
projective differential geometry. Various approaches to Gaussian
curvature for surfaces are discussed. The curvature tensor, conjugate
points, and the Laplace-Beltrami operator are first considered in detail
for two-dimensional surfaces, which facilitates studying them in the
many-dimensional case. A separate chapter is devoted to the differential
geometry of Lie groups.