Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology A Basic Introduction 2/e: 11 (Oxford Master Series in Physics)

Let me preface this review by saying I majored in physics and finished college 14 years ago. I've always wanted to study GR but went to dental school right after college and so never got the chance. With the latest developments in cosmology, ie, dark flow, dark energy, dark matter, I finally couldn't suppress my curiosity any longer. The framework for understanding cosmology is GR.I own the other GR books by Hartle, Schutz and Carroll. Each of them is more a textbook to accompany a lecture course than one for the self-taught.This book reads more like a novel. The author begins with why Einstein tackled the problem of generalizing special relativity and why that generalization would also be a theory of gravity (Equivalence Principle). The book includes a good intro to special relativiy (SR) at the intermediate college level. This is followed by Minkowski's spacetime which is a deeper mathematical description of SR. From there, the next few chapters elucidate on the Metric tensor and the curvature of spacetime.After you've learned the Metric, there is a chapter on black holes and 3 chapters on cosmology (expanding universe, inflation, cosmic microwave background, the cosmological constant and how it can be used to take into account dark matter and dark energy, and much more). I particularly enjoyed the cosmology part of the book. It gives you a taste of how modern physicists are using GR to tackle the biggest questions in cosmology. And it gives you a break to absorb the theory before going deeper mathematically.The final part of the book gives a complete treatment of GR using tensors and ends with a chapter on gravity waves. This is the most difficult part of the book but as with the rest of the book, everything is well explained and there are no gaps in logic that would otherwise frustrate the autodidact.You must be willing to do some of the problems at the ends of each chapter. To get the most out of this book, you should read it with pencil and paper in hand. Solutions to the more difficult problems are provided in the back of the book which is great pedagogically.I would rank this up there with Shankar's QM and Griffiths' Intro to EM. It is by far the best intro book on GR out there.

This book attempts to teach General Relativity at a sophomore level of sophistication. It takes the "let's ignore tensors instead of trying to teach them" approach. It certainly makes the material easy to learn, but the material is General Relativity, what need is there for a book on one of the most advanced topics in physics from one of the least advanced groups of individuals?This makes for a book that is highly repetitive and overly simplified that chooses to belabor the lower level concepts instead of developing the more fundamental and important topics.That being said, it does have a purpose. It's a pretty solid candidate as a companion reader. It will drill into your head concepts that are very likely to be overlooked and skipped in favor of more advanced knowledge. I knew the Riemann tensor and differential form formulation before I understood quite a few implications of the EP. This book emphasized the EP to such a degree that I now know it pretty well.

5 star grading. A good buy.