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Title: General Relativity by Robert Wald ISBN: 0-226-87033-2 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $37.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.27 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the better books to learn gravitation theory
Comment: This book was a little scary to read the first time I opened it. Abstract Indices all over. OMG, What does this upside down triangle mean? Where did this strange L come from? These are the sort of questions you will be asking yourself if you try to read this book without adequate preparation in Differential Geomtery. Sure Wald has 2 chapter devoted to this, but thats like asking you to learn all the vocabulary that you have in english from 5 little summary sheets. However once you do know soemthing about Riemannian Geomtery(an excellent elementary source is the book by Bishop and Goldberg "Tensor Analysis by Manifolds"), this book is a joy to read. Every explanation is crystal clear, and makes for a very enlightening experience overall. There's no need to read between the lines that some books expect you to, and Wald dosent insult his reader's intelligence either. This books is written for serious students of relativity, be it applied mathematicians or physicists. For the people willing to patiently read the book, and learn the details he presents, this book is probably the best preparation to general relativity. One complaint however is the noticeable shortage in exercises. And the ones supplied arent particularly difficult either. But all in all, an amazing read.
Rating: 2
Summary: Fair
Comment: If you like the formal and dry, boring style of a graduate level mathematics textbook, this is the book for you, if not look elsewhere. I found Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler to be a much better book than this one. MTW takes a more physical approach and is much more interesting reading. MTW is also very good at introducing concepts like one forms and tensors in general to the uninitiated student. If you read Wald, you are better off already having a good grasp of differential geometry. My suggestion for learning GR is MTW supplemented by D'Inverno and Schutz.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good
Comment: I used this text for a course after taking an undergraduate GR course based on Shutz. I found Shutz to be a much clearer and pedagogical text, and don't think I would have learned GR as easily if I had started with Wald. I think one requires greater mathematical preparation than I possess to fully appreciate the discussions involving topology in the second chapter and appendix. Oddly, however, this text becomes clearer as the reader advances through it: later chapters were more straightforward and still concise.
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Title: Tensors, Differential Forms, and Variational Principles by David Lovelock, Hanno Rund ISBN: 0486658406 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 April, 1989 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: A First Course in General Relativity by Bernard F. Schutz ISBN: 0521277035 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 January, 1985 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Gravitation (Physics Series) by Charles W. Misner, Kip Thorne, John Wheeler ISBN: 0716703440 Publisher: Worth Publishers Inc Pub. Date: 01 September, 1973 List Price(USD): $118.75 |
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Title: Problem Book in Relativity and Gravitation by A. Lightman, R. H. Price ISBN: 069108162X Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1975 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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Title: Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity by Sean Carroll ISBN: 0805387323 Publisher: Pearson Addison Wesley Pub. Date: 20 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $83.00 |
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