Best book on relativity for newbie ?

[golu14]

basically I am looking for the book that einstein wrote himself 'relativity: general and special'

but there are soo many versions/editions of it, can u recommend me a specific one?

thanks.

 

[Bill_K]

basically I am looking for the book that einstein wrote himself 'relativity: general and special'

Why would you want to read something that's 100 years old?

 

[Fredrik]

The question in the title is very different from the question in the post.

I usually recommend the GR book by Schutz for its material on SR. It's also not a bad place to start learning about GR, but if you really want to learn GR, you will eventually have to study a text that doesn't try to hide the differential geometry (e.g. Wald), and you will also have to study differential geometry. I like the books by Lee for that. Unfortunately, Lee requires you to know a substantial amount of topology.

There are some books on SR that are supposed to require even less mathematical knowledge and maturity from its readers. The one that gets the most recommendations is Taylor & Wheeler.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Why would you want to read something that's 100 years old?

Nostalgia?

 

[Daverz]

For SR I would recommend It's About Time by N. David Mermin.

 

[robphy]

http://archive.org/details/cu31924011804774 Relativity; the special and general theory (Einstein, 1920)
http://archive.org/details/relativity_librivox
... but not the best book on relativity for a newbie.

 

[TomServo]

The Geometry of Special Relativity. I forget the author. It's very new.

 

[robphy]

The Geometry of Special Relativity. I forget the author. It's very new.

Probably, Tevian Dray (http://people.oregonstate.edu/~drayt/ ).
There is also a new book on GR and on Differential Forms.

 

[Daverz]

Probably, Tevian Dray (http://people.oregonstate.edu/~drayt/ ).

You wouldn't want a newbie to confuse this with the book by Naber (Geometry of Minkowski Spacetime). That would be a shock.

There is also a new book on GR and on Differential Forms.

Looks like it's not out yet:

https://www.amazon.com/Differential-Forms-Geometry-General-Relativity/dp/146651000&tag=pfamazon01-20

Looking for that I found this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3642357970/?tag=pfamazon01-20

A more recent GR book that takes a "Physics first" approach similar to Hartle is the one by Ta-Pei Cheng.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199573646/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[TomServo]

I bought "Relativity Demystified" which promises to lay down the basics of GR, or at least the math you use in it. It's not explicitly a differential geometry book, but I haven't read it yet. Too busy studying for the PGRE. :(

 

[smodak]

I am readig this book right now and I really like it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0957389442/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Daverz]

I bought "Relativity Demystified" which promises to lay down the basics of GR, or at least the math you use in it. It's not explicitly a differential geometry book, but I haven't read it yet. Too busy studying for the PGRE. :(

The book reads like a set of notes. There are many better books.

 

[tia89]

For special relativity I like "Introduction to SR" by Wolfgang Rindler (Oxford Science)... uses the signature like particle physicists I fear but it explains things well... as for GR there are a lot of good books... Carroll's "Spacetime and Geometry" is a good book, also Wald's "Genrel Relativity" but it is advanced, or Weinberg's "Gravitation and Cosmology", even if it is quite old... it is good for GR but it is not so updated as for the Cosmology part... lot of others I don't know, they tell me Padmanabhan's "Gravitation" is also good, as it has also a small part about quantum fields in curved spacetime and gravity in higher and lower dimensions and as an emergent phenomenon

 

[vanhees71]

Padmanabhan's book has a nice concept, but it's full of typos. I'd not recommend it for the beginner!