Customer Reviews

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

There is no doubt that Albert Einstein has been one of the most brilliant minds of the past century. His major contribution to science was the special and the general theory of relativity, which gave a new dimension to that we call today "Modern Physics". Many people feel frustrated because when they try to understand relativity, they find some authors that expound in their books a complex arrangement of equations referring to the mathematical part of the theory, namely, the books are accessible for people with certain levels of knowledge (that is the case of engineers, physicists, mathematicians, among others). Nevertheless, perceiving and anticipating this situation, Albert Einstein wrote this book (more than fifty years ago) whit the purpose of exposing the special and the general theory of relativity in such a way that anyone can understand it. I this sense, I think, Einstein succeeded because despite the shortness of the book, the same covers the most important aspects of relativity in a clear and concise form. Moreover, the book has appendixes where the author makes reference to some interesting subjects like the problem of space and relativity, the experimental confirmation of the theory, to name a few. If you have decided to learn something about relativity, and you do not have vast knowledge in physics and mathematics, I sincerely recommend you this book. On the other hand, if you were a reader looking for more technical information (mathematical foundation of general relativity), I would choose the book "Gravitation" written by Misner, Wheeler y Thorne. This text represents an encyclopedia about general relativity.

This is the introduction to relativity written by Einstein. It is NOT the book which contains the original works, which is a very difficult book (just think that Planck had to ask for several clarifications before he understood Einstein's breakthrough paper). Here the great scientist set to himself the goal of explaining to the educated, but not specialized, man.
Einstein was, of course, very deep. When he talked about any topic in physics, chances are that he went deeper than anyone else who thought about the same theme, for a comparable time span. Now, imagine relativity. When he wrote this book he had thought about this matter for several decades. Nobody reached this depth, then and afterwards. The fruits of his thought, like black-holes, are being proved true now, after so much time!
So, the difference between this book and all other introductory books on relativity is proportional to the difference between Einstein himself and the other authors. You don't have to believe me: just read the excerpts! You'll not remain indifferent to the majesty of his ideas. Put yourself in the right mood: Einstein was a very simple man who was, in writing this book, sincerely interested in explaining his creation to you. Follow his path, read attentively, and, above all, think!
The reward will be great.

Before buying have read reviews. There are 49 out of 86 five star ones. So opted to buy to get a chance to touch the work of a genius. It never happened though. The book begins with text references to Fig. 1, Fig 2, Fig. 3, etc. No such diagrams.....Nada, just empty spaces... As a matter of fact, not a single drawing in the book! I mean, the book is reprinted with NO crucial accompanying the text drawings. Probably, the latter were in a separate file which they didn't copyright to make it cheaper, anyway it rendered the book useless. I would've sentenced the editor to a jail time.
Ah...here it is: Publisher: General Books LLC (August 19, 2009) ISBN-10: 0217982360 ISBN-13: 978-0217982368
"We recreated the book from the original using Optical Character Recognition to keep the cost of the book as low as possible. Therefore could you please forgive...etc. "
What they're apologizing here for is that they have committed a fraud. And "Look Inside" browser feacher shows you another book edition!
In hindsight, I suspect most 5-4 star reviews are fictitious...OR... they combined all reviews from different publications into one file. Buyer be aware!
Joseph Zacharow.
Update: Yep, Amazon throws DIFFERENT reviews of the same book under DIFFERENT publications (Einstein, Relativity), and DIFFERENT publications of DIFFERENT books of the SAME author (Albert Einstein, Relativity - The Special and The General Theory) in ONE big deceitful pile.
Thank you Amazon!

The reviewer of April 13 from Moscow, Idaho says this is not the book to read unless you already understand the theory. Maybe fair enough. It was written when Einstein had achieved youthful fame, though, not in his dotage, if he had such a thing. It may be a little more difficult for the translation, but not much. Contrary to some reviewers, it is not that easy to follow, and if it seems like an easy read, you probably haven't understood it. There are many books written since where it is probably easier to learn about special relativity, to say nothing of the basic ideas of general relativity. But once you have started to get the hang of things, this book is a masterpiece of exposition! It allows one to follow Einstein's actual thought process in arriving at these theories -- pretty much by a process of pure thought -- more or less in the steps he probably took himself. There is not a word in the exposition that was not carefully thought out. So, learn the theory somewhere else and then read this book -- you'll understand the theory better for reading Einstein's book -- or read this book first, keep going back to it 'til it starts to make sense, and maybe consult some other, more "user-friendly" textbook at the same time. Einstein claims his book allows a lay reader with only high school math to understand relativity. To which a friend of mine replied "Yeah, if you have an IQ of 800". To which I say, have patience, keep thinking about it and going back to it.

It seems as if at least two or three books are published every year to explain the concepts of special and general relativity to the public. I haven't encountered another one as good as this.

Contrary to widespread misconception, Albert Einstein was not an exceptionally expert mathematician. His justly deserved fame rests on the fact that he had an incredible intuition for physics, and a willingness to think the unthinkable whenever that seemed to be where the physics led. So it's not surprising that he could explain both the concepts of special relativity and those of general relativity in clear, simple language suitable for the non-technical reader. The result is a masterpiece, especially the discussion of general relativity.

The mathematics of general relativity in its applications is esoteric, to say the least; any reader who wishes to glimpse this can take a look at Robert M. Wald's book "General Relativity." But the underlying ideas are very simple, simple enough to be easily grasped by any 11th or 12th grade student in an "academic" curriculum. The problem with them is that for most people the ideas are counterintuitive. The other books for laypeople that I've looked at go through all sorts of contortions to make the ideas plausible. Einstein doesn't. He proceeds steadily, simply and logically to show how special relativity follows from direct observation. Then he points out that special relativity is only useful in certain exceptional cases, and asks himself (and us) what properties a more general physical theory must have to be consistent both with observation and with special relativity. General relativity just lands in our laps as a result of this simple train of thought.

I treasure this book.

This is a superb introduction to Special Relativity, which this writer, who is certainly no genius, was able to work through at age 18 (not without effort). The material on General Relativity (GR) is no harder, but much less detailed, so that one cannot hope to get a realistic idea of what GR is really about from this book alone. In fact, one needs considerable preparation in Physics and Math to even begin to understand the nature of GR.

Unfortunately, the quality of American education has deteriorated enormously over the past three decades, so that even the typical senior Physics major at all but a dozen or so American universities can no longer be expected to cope with this book. This book is a serious introduction and not meant for the present American high school graduate with A's in English but typically eighth-grade reading skills, and whose Math skills consist only of a few faint memories. Nor does the American university, which has responded to the lowering of standards in the high schools by continually lowering its own standards, prepare the student for books like this. Customers who whine that this book shows that Einstein couldn't write English betray not only their own very low reading level and poor preparation (the book requires nothing more than non-AP high-school Math and Physics), but also their foolishness in believing that Einstein, rather than a native speaker of English, prepared the translation into English.

For the dedicated reader, for whom learning is a mission, and who has learned his high school Math and Physics, this is an excellent book. It gives the dedicated and prepared reader the chance to interact with one of the greatest minds of all time. Einstein himself believed that any high-school student would be able to read this book with understanding, a belief was shown to be wrong even in 1917. (A reporter in Berlin asked Einstein's niece, then a high-school student if she had read and understood the book. "Oh yes," she replied happily, "everything but the part about coordinate systems!")

That this book has endured so long (more than eight decades) in popularity is a testament to the genius of its author and his ability to explain Physics clearly. This is a book which richly repays the effort taken to read it.

Do not buy the copy of this book with ISBN 978-1452841212 !!! You have been warned! The equations which are set out as images (ie any that require more than simple typesetting) have not been printed, and the text just shows the file name instead eg. eq1.gif. I can't believe that they're selling this book! The other copies are ok from what I have seen on the preview pages.

In his effort to create a "simple explanation [of relativity] that anyone can understand" Einstein comes close to perfection.

His language is clear and lucid, and the thought problems he suggests in order to prompt his reader into understanding the faults of classical theory vs. the extraordinary coherence and power of the theory of relativity are downright fun. But make no mistake--this book is not easy.

The concepts behind relativity are difficult to understand and require some patience on the part of the reader. At times, this difficulty is exasperated by Einstein's desire to keep his explanations succinct.

I would start with Einstein's "The Evolution of Physics" in order to get a feeling for the general concepts behind relativity and behind physics in general before attacking this excellent but challenging book.

That having been said, I LOVED every minute I spent reading this book and happily recommend it to anyone interested in twisting their brain around some wild problems with wilder solutions.

While reading the reviews I noticed something. The special case was considered well written, while the general theory was considered difficult to follow. There is a simple explanation to this, Leopold Infeld (protege of Einstein's) helped in the rewriting of the Special Case, his English was much more fluent than that of Einstein. Infeld was also a superb teacher, as such he had a fluency and a rhythm with words that is easy to follow. I highly recommend any of Einstein's writings but also caution you as to his readability... On the other hand Einstein recognized this and coauthored with Infeld, (or rewrote with him previous writings), as such I highly recommend that you get those books coauthored or written by Leopold Infeld.

Great for the young student of Physics!

This is an excellent book, written in the "Master's" own style and faithfully translated from the German by Robert Lawson. The translation dates to 1920 and new readers may find the English a little quaint, but for all that, it is a great effort at presenting in "plain speak", the concepts of Relativity.

The book starts with a lucid explanation of the Train and Platform example of Galelian Relativity and then proceeds to highlight the incompatibility between the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. Without encumbering the reader with the Maths (found in the appendices) the ideas of time dilation and length contraction are discussed. The General Theory is developed via a fine example: that of an observer on a rotating disk.

This is a good complement to the overtly scientific/mathmatical books on the subject. Unfortunately,, despite its many qualities, just like many of the alternatives of this genre, Einstein's book does not fully succeed in explaining the complex concepts to the lay reader. Rather, this is a nice little book that will be suitable for a good calibre Maths/Physics student in the sixth form/high school.