Relativity Good introductory book about general relativity at undergraduate level

[StenEdeback]

I don't think it's been mentioned that Sean Carroll's notes are online here:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/grnotes

These form the basis of his GR textbook.

Thank you very much!

 

[haushofer]

Yes, it is personal.

I really like Zee's book, because they offer a lot of intuition, insights and context. That compensates the lack of rigour more than enough.

Also, they're actually fun to read. As a reviewer wrote: "his books are not meant for you to become experts, but to fal in love with the subject." Personally, I don't have the ambition to become an expert. I mainly want to be amazed and get an intuitive understanding. Al that rigorous math is easily forgotten anyway. But maybe I'm braindamaged.

 

[PAllen]

For me it is a big no. If you can get your hands on Wu Ki Tung's book, it is all you need for group theory in physics without invoking sofisticated mathematics. It takes you from 0 to Young Tableaux for the classical groups, which are a foundation for Quantum Chromodynamics and Electroweak Theory in the Standard Model. It goes through the Lorentz group smoothly, without trying to attempt finesse which Zee misses (real vs complex, real vs complexified vs real forms of complexified Lie algebras).
As for GR, I only recommend two books: Ray D'Inverno's (first level) and Wald's (second and third level). If the latter is too expensive as a used book, then perhaps Norbert Straumann's text should serve the same spot, if found at a decent price.

Scanned PDFs of Wald are easy to find on the internet. I won’t link, because I am not sure about the legalities for different countries.

 

[vanhees71]

I really like Zee's book, because they offer a lot of intuition, insights and context. That compensates the lack of rigour more than enough.

Also, they're actually fun to read. As a reviewer wrote: "his books are not meant for you to become experts, but to fal in love with the subject." Personally, I don't have the ambition to become an expert. I mainly want to be amazed and get an intuitive understanding. Al that rigorous math is easily forgotten anyway. But maybe I'm braindamaged.

Well, the qft book is not that brillant. You can read it if you have already good knowledge about the topic. Then it offers entertaining approaches to the known topics, but imho usually it's not detailed enough for the beginner to really understand the topic. I don't mean the lack of rigor. Rigor in QFT is something for the mathematicians to work out. One should be aware that it's an unsolved problem. Except for toy models in lower dimensions afaik there's no rigorous non-perturbative treatment of real-world QFTs, let alone the Standard Model.