Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity [Hardcover]

Steven Weinberg (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 657 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1 edition (July 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471925675
• ISBN-13: 978-0471925675
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book based on the physics, not the mathematics, August 5, 2002

By 

marcvg "marcvg" (MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (Hardcover)

After a completing graduate school, I decided it was time to learn GR on my own. I got Weinberg's book, and, at first reading, I was put off by it--there are effectively no diagrams, no problems, and no pedagogy. So on to Misner, Thorne, Wheeler. Well these kings have no clothes: MTW contains almost no clean, declarative sentences and could be reduced to 1/4 its size with straightforward editing. So I bought B. F. Schutz's book read it, and and went back to Weinberg's book. With both in hand, I am acquiring a satisfying understanding of GR. And I now realize that Weinberg's book is a masterpiece. As in all his texts, Weinberg's passion is to expose the underlying logic of the physics. All follows from the Equivalnce Princple, and this view gives his book a logic coherency that other's lack. (Try seeing where the Equivalence principle fits in Schutz's presentation.) One criticism: I believe that Weinberg was writing a text for his peers to set them straight about GR; he neglected students. It would have been great if he could have included a mathematical appendix or two to make the text more accessible. But even so, it is a wonderful book.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best, June 1, 2000

By 

Alessandro (Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (Hardcover)

I greatly appreciated this book when I was a student. The tensor analysis is very carefully explained; in addition, you really get a basic physics understanding. The equivalence principle and Mach-Einstein theories discussions are simply wonderful. Of course, some experimental data are too old now to be taken seriously.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent treatment of GR - written for a physicist, March 16, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (Hardcover)

This is one of the finest GR books that is written for a physicist. Although it is slightly dated, it can still be profitably used today to learn the foundations of the subject that no other contemporary text has explained so clearly.

There is a strong emphasis on the equivalence principle in the book, and many interesting illustrations of this principle can be found throughout the book. There's no discussion of black holes, of course, since the book hasn't probably been revised since its publication in the early seventies. However, Weinberg's book can be truly judged based on the brilliant presentation of the physical ideas of GR in a way that is so familiar to the physicist. A mathematically minded physicist who cares little about real physical insights will be obviously disappointed by this book.