In the spring of 1985 A Casson announced an interesting invariant of homology 3 spheres via constructions on representation spaces This invariant generalizes the Rohlin invariant and gives surprising corollaries in low dimensional topology In the fall of that same year Selman Akbulut and John McCarthy held a seminar on this invariant These notes grew out of that seminar The authors have tried to remain close to Casson s original outline and proceed by giving needed details including an exposition of Newstead s results They have often chosen classical concrete approaches over general methods For example they did not attempt to give gauge theory explanations for the results of Newstead instead they followed his original techniques Originally published in 1990 The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print on demand technology to again make available previously out of print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905