Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity (Hardcover)

by James B. Hartle (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The aim of this groundbreaking new text is to bring general relativity into the undergraduate curriculum and make this fundamental theory accessible to all physics majors. Using a "physics first" approach to the subject, renowned relativist James B. Hartle provides a fluent and accessible introduction that uses a minimum of new mathematics and is illustrated with a wealth of exciting applications. The emphasis is on the exciting phenomena of gravitational physics and the growing connection between theory and observation. The Global Positioning System, black holes, X-ray sources, pulsars, quasars, gravitational waves, the Big Bang, and the large scale structure of the universe are used to illustrate the widespread role of how general relativity describes a wealth of everyday and exotic phenomena. For anyone interested in physics or general relativity.

About the Author

James B. Hartle was educated at Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology where he completed a Ph.D. in 1964. He is currently Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His scientific work is concerned with the application of Einstein's relativistic theory of gravitation (general relativity) to realistic astrophysical situations, especially cosmology.

Professor Hartle has made important contributions to the understanding of gravitational waves, relativistic stars, and black holes. He is currently interested in the earliest moments of the Big Bang where the subjects of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, and cosmology overlap.

He has visited Cambridge often since 1971 and has collaborated closely with Stephen Hawking over many years, most notably on their famous "no boundary proposal" for the origin of the universe. Professor Hartle is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a past director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Benjamin Cummings; illustrated edition edition (January 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805386629
• ISBN-13: 978-0805386622
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #340,468 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #26 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Gravity
  #26 in	Books > Science > Physics > Gravity

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best ~ GR ~ for beginners., July 23, 2005

By	smallphi (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

Many beginners in GR don't have a rudimentary intuitive understanding of what 4-vectors are and how to use them in a simple physical problem. This textbook helps with that - it gives you a workout in using 4-vectors and thinking geometrically about spacetime. It teaches you the basic notions of metric, embedding diagrams, hypersurfaces, observers carrying their orthonormal bases and performing measurements, geodesics, coordinate transformations, curvature and energy tensors. Along the way, it manages to explore in detail the three most important metrics in GR: black holes (static and rotating), cosmological models of the universe and gravitational radiation. The book covers the conceptual foundations (how Einstein developed the idea), the mathematical machinery, the analysis of the historical confirmations of GR as well as many contemporary observations like gravitational lensing, cosmic background radiation, or acceleration of the universe expansion (by the way the cosmological chapters are the most logical introduction to cosmology I've seen), even future experiments like gravity probe B that is going to measure the 'frame dragging' around Earth.

In the first 400 pages the book is exploring different metrics by calculating physical observable quantities like redshift, orbits, bending of light and so on using 4-vectors only. There are many examples that show you actual calculations right after a new concept is introduced and help you learn thinking in terms of 4-vectors. The usual tensor analysis, curvature, covariant derivative and Einstein equation are introduced in the last 100 pages. Each chapter has about 20 problems on average, ranging from very easy ones that familiarize you with the new concepts, average ones that train you to combine several concepts from the text, and quite hard ones (marked with [C]) that require a lot of creativity, guessing and effort on your part (sometimes you can't solve them but don't cry :). I've solved about 90% of the problems - unfortunately there aren't any answers ... Your calculus must be in prime shape, you have to know what differential is, you often have to solve integrals (for the time consuming ones use Mathematica), differential equations (only simple ones), approximate terms in formulas 'up to first order' in something and frequently convert between SI units and geometrized units (c = G = 1) but nothing fancier than that is required. The book has a web site

[...]

with supplements (some more theoretical derivations, nothing scary) and downloadable Mathematica notebooks that calculate Christoffels and curvature for any metric you fill in (believe me they save you a LOT of algebra).

If you can spend about 6 hours per day, you can read the text and solve most of the problems in about 4 months. The text gave me many answers but often made me ask deeper questions whose answers I have to find on my own. I would say the presentation is 3/4 very clear and 1/4 is kind of fuzzy and could be improved by the author - it 'makes sense' when you read it but when you start solving the problems it turns out there are important details missing - I usually resolve these but it would be less time consuming if the text was more systematic. Solving the problems makes you really understand the concepts and is more valuable than reading the text alone! It is amazing how the book cuts through stuff that sounds 'too sophisticated' and after a few days you understand it and can even calculate it.

Lastly, this text covers the beginning level of GR. You will have to read other texts like Carroll or Inverno for intermediate level and Wald for higher level.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly interesting book, November 25, 2006

By	C. Dunn "independent thinker" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the best book for understanding gravity mathematically at the level of an advanced undergraduate. Though intended for the classroom (and based on a class at UCSB) there are many aspects of this book which make it nearly ideal for self-study:

* interesting side-bars, with some math
* thorough details in mathematical explanations
* never too much repetition of covered material
* moves from special cases (with applications) to more general cases, allowing the student to learn a little at a time (which is rare in books on general relativity)

The only downside is that it doesn't go quite as far into recent theories as you might like. This is fine for me as I, as a complete layman, would rather understand a bit of relativity well--something I missed in my undergraduate physics training.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a long-waited text, July 5, 2004

By	Farseem Mohammedy (Hamilton, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a successful textbook covering intermediate levels between advanced undergraduate and graduate. This was long-sought book for senior students who understood special relativity and wanted to learn general relativity. Ofcourse those of Misner-Thorne-Wheeler and Weinberg are the classics in the field and Wald is the best known graduate text. But Hartle's text is a very good introduction for undergrads from other branches of Science and Engineering and for Physics as well. I personally was looking for a good introductory text for GR and I would congratulate Jim Hartle for being the author of this marvelous piece who is also a forerunner in the gravitational research.