Several distinctive aspects make Dynamical Systems unique, including: treating the subject from a mathematical perspective with the proofs of most of the results included; providing a careful review of background materials; introducing ideas through examples and at a level accessible to a beginning graduate student; focusing on multidimensional systems of real variables. The book treats the dynamics of both iteration of functions and solutions of ordinary differential equations. Many concepts are first introduced for iteration of functions where the geometry is simpler, but results are interpreted for differential equations. The dynamical systems approach of the book concentrates on properties of the whole system or subsets of the system rather than individual solutions. The more local theory discussed deals with characterizing types of solutions under various hypothesis, and later chapters address more global aspects. What's New in the Second Edition?:
A revised discussion of the saddle node bifurcation; a new section on the horseshoe for a flow with a transverse homoclinic point; material on horseshoes for nontransverse homoclinic points, indicating recent extensions to the understanding of how horseshoes arise; information proving the ergodicity of a hyperbolic toral automorphism; a new chapter on Hamiltonian systems.