S. Novikov has criticized the state of Manifold Theory "However, a huge informational mess was created in the 1970s" ... "In particular, the final Kirby-Siebenmann classification of topological multidimensional manifolds therefore is not yet proved in the literature".
While I agree with Novikov in most of the things his complaint, I do not think the last sentence above is reasonable. The purpose of these lectures is to review the history of manifolds, and show how these theorems may be proved with more modern techniques.