Book excerpt: This book is intended as a one-semester course in general topology, a.k.a. point-set topology, for undergraduate students as well as first-year graduate students. Such a course is considered a prerequisite for further studying analysis, geometry, manifolds, and certainly, for a career of mathematical research. Researchers may find it helpful especially from the comprehensive indices.General topology resembles a language in modern mathematics. Because of this, the book is with a concentration on basic concepts in general topology, and the presentation is of a brief style, both concise and precise. Though it is hard to determine exactly which concepts therein are basic and which are not, the author makes efforts in the selection according to personal experience on the occurrence frequency of notions in advanced mathematics, and to related books that have received admirable reviews.This book also contains exercises for each chapter with selected solutions. Interrelationships among concepts are taken into account frequently. Twelve particular topological spaces are repeatedly exploited, which serve as examples to learn new concepts based on old ones.