Exploring Gravitation: A Review of Kip Thorne and John Wheeler's Book

[MathematicalPhysicist]

i wonder, the book by kip thorne and john wheeler called gravitation, is it a technical textbook on gr? and on a scale of 1-5 (1-easy 5 extremely hard) how would you rate this book?
are there any other challenging textbooks on GR?

 

[neutrino]

MTW is a (technical) textbook that I hope to study someday. As for challenging GR texts, I've read many reviews which say https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226870332/?tag=pfamazon01-20 is a very good (best?) and challenging graduate-level text on GR.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

neutrino, i too hope that someday i would have a spare time to read this monumental textbook. (that with the principia mathematica by russel and whitehead are hardcore texts in their respective fields).

 

[Loud Red]

Gravitation is the one that I studied, and I highly recommend. I have read Wald's book, and I don't think that it is as pedogagical as is Gravitation (though I have a slight bias).

Or you could look into PAM Dirac's "General Relativity", it's probably the hardest book I've read on General Relativity.

 

[Daverz]

Wald's book is a tough nut, very terse and not very friendly, but it still has much material not found in other books.

I recently got Carroll's graduate text, and it's much more friendly than Wald. But I paid $70 for a used copy.

Can anyone claim to have read all of MTW? What a monster. Still a cool book to dip into now and then.

 

[George Jones]

Wald's book is a tough nut, very terse and not very friendly, but it still has much material not found in other books.

I find amusing what Wald said about the exercises in his book: ' ... and none (exercises) which are, in my opinion, inordinately difficult (i.e., I think I can solve them).'

This, from one of the world's leading experts on relativity!

I recently got Carroll's graduate text, and it's much more friendly than Wald. But I paid $70 for a used copy.

Chapter 9 is worth the price of admission.

Can anyone claim to have read all of MTW? What a monster.

Not me.

Still a cool book to dip into now and then.

It's sitting open on my desk as I type.