Reading material for K_1and topology

C.T.C. Wall: Finiteness conditions for CW complexes I, Annals of Mathematics 81 (1965), 56-59.

C.T.C.Wall: Finitness conditions for CW complexes II, Proc. Royal Soc. A 295 (1966), 129-139.

J. Milnor, Whitehead torsion, bull. AMS. 72 (1966), 358-426.

You may find interesting things about surgery and L-theory on Andrew Ranicki’s webpage:

http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~aar/