Graduate students typically enter into courses on string theory having little to no familiarity with the mathematical background so crucial to the discipline. As such, this book, based on lecture notes, edited and expanded, from the graduate course taught by the author at SISSA and BIMSA, places particular emphasis on said mathematical background. The target audience for the book includes students of both theoretical physics and mathematics. This explains the book's "strange" style: on the one hand, it is highly didactic and explicit, with a host of examples for the physicists, but, in addition, there are also almost 100 separate technical boxes, appendices, and starred sections, in which matters discussed in the main text are put into a broader mathematical perspective, while deeper and more rigorous points of view (particularly those from the modern era) are presented. The boxes also serve to further shore up the reader's understanding of the underlying math. In writing this book,the author's goal was not to achieve any sort of definitive conciseness, opting instead for clarity and "completeness". To this end, several arguments are presented more than once from different viewpoints and in varying contexts.
This book is a well-organized and readable text on string theory. The preface and table of contents provide an overview of the book's content and its background. ... The book provides readers with a solid understanding of string theory, covering nearly all topics typically included in standard texts on the subject. Each chapter includes a thorough bibliography, and some chapters can stand alone. (Farhang Loran, Mathematical Reviews, April 2025)