Customer Reviews

Gravitation and Inertia

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John Archibald Wheeler does not need any introduction,neither by me, nor by anybody else:he is simply the greatest living authority on General Relativity!This book, written together with Ignazio Ciufolini,is as interesting as all his other books,and is well worth the price,despite what our friend Johngorno says!!
However,Johngorno is right in one respect:when the authors say ,in the Preface(page ix),that the "book may be used as an introduction to general relativity..." ,they are misleading the prospective reader!As a matter of fact ,if you have not had at least an introductory course in GR ,such as "A first course in General Relativity" by B.F. Schutz,don't even think about reading this book.Even the Mathematical Appendix at the end is not enough for someone not familiar with tensor calculus.The unaware reader who reaches page 21 ,for example,is hit on the head with the expression giving the Christoffel symbols as a function of the metric components: how is he or she supposed to guess that the comma represents a partial derivative,that sigma is a dummy index ,and therefore that there is a sum involved in this expression?He or she might turn to the mathematical index ,which will direct him or her to the Appendix,page 427,but this won't help much:the summation convention is not explained there,but at page 425,and in a very inconspicuous fashion!
So,albeit a great book on gravitation theory and experiment, this is definitely not an introduction to Einstein's theory of gravitation.It is rather aimed at the real "cognoscenti" in the field.
But if the book's contents are outstanding, the same cannot be said with regards the form:the pictures are quite poor for a book priced at more than $90, and the paper is not that good either.Too bad!

I purchased my copy used (20$) and (after my initial delight at the bargain) was disappointed. I had hoped for a more technical intermediate-level expansion of Wheeler's intriguing but vague "Journey into Gravity and Spacetime." This book is instead largely a hodge-podge of specialty articles of interest only to advanced professionals in the field. Unless you have money to burn, invest it in another text, like "Gravitation," by Thorne, Wheeler, etc., which isn't great but is useful.

This book tought me a lot about the physics of gravitation and inerti