TITLE: Background to understand Gromov's green book
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: I have a decent background in differential geometry. I have read John Lee's introduction to smooth manifolds and doCarmo's Riemannian Geometry. I was trying to read Misha Gromov's Metric structures for Riemannian and non Riemannian spaces but am finding it extremely difficult to follow. Any suggestions for books/papers as prerequisites ?

REPLY [5 votes]: Slightly more advanced books on Riemannian geometry can help, in particular Petersen, and Gallot-Hulin-Lafontaine. Gromov draws a lot of his examples from Riemannian geometry !
Reading Burago-Burago-Ivanov "Introduction to metric geometry" is a also a good idea. It will give the necessary understanding of intrinsic metric spaces. 
With this a good part of the book should be understandable.