Relativity What Is a Good Companion Book for Wald?

[QFT25]

I'm taking a general relativity class and the professor is really good. When I'm in class I understand everything he is saying. However when it is time to do problems sets from Wald I struggle a bit because I find Wald hard to read. I'm not saying Wald is bad but I feel like I can benefit if I had a companion book. Any ideas. Btw this is a graduate class.

Thanks

 

[The Bill]

I recommend Sean Carroll's lecture notes:

https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9712019

He later expanded and refined them into his textbook Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. That textbook is a bit expensive, and any gaps in the notes it fills are more than covered by Wald, which you already have.

If you have a good university library, they might have Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's Gravitation, which is also excellent. They are pretty verbose, so their text is often good to go to for expanded explanations of various points. I can't recommend it to buy right now, because it is out of print and used copies are ridiculously expensive.

The main advantage to both of these as a companion to Wald is their good prose explanations and slower pace.

 

[robphy]

You might also try Geroch's lecture notes, which have been TeXed and published...
http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/mip/books/geroch-gr.html
http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/mip/books/diffgeom.html

In Bob Wald's preface, he acknowledges Bob Geroch's influence.

 

[Demystifier]

Another vote for Carroll!

 

[smodak]

http://www.blau.itp.unibe.ch/GRLecturenotes.html

Lecture Notes on General Relativity by Blau

 

[QFT25]

Thanks you all very much for the wonderful suggestions. I'll look into Carroll I heard a lot of good things about it,