The book is concerned with one of the most interesting and important topological invariants of 3-dimensional manifolds based on an original idea of Kurt Reidemeister (1935). This invariant, called the maximal abelian torsion, was introduced by the author in 1976. The purpose of the book is to give a systematic exposition of the theory of maximal abelian torsions of 3-manifolds. Apart from publication in scientific journals, many results are recent and appear here for the first time.

Students and researchers with basic background in algebraic topology and low-dimensional topology will benefit from this monograph. Previous knowledge of the theory of torsions is not required. Numerous exercises and historical remarks as well as a collection of open problems complete the exposition.