General Relativity: The Essentials by Carlo Rovelli (PDF)

Description

In this short book, renowned theoretical physicist and author Carlo Rovelli gives a straightforward introduction to Einstein’s General Relativity, our current theory of gravitation. Focusing on conceptual clarity, he derives all the basic results in the simplest way, taking care to explain the physical, philosophical and mathematical ideas at the heart of “the most beautiful of all scientific theories”. Some of the main applications of General Relativity are also explored, for example, black holes, gravitational waves and cosmology, and the book concludes with a brief introduction to quantum gravity. Written by an author well known for the clarity of his presentation of scientific ideas, this concise book will appeal to university students looking to improve their understanding of the principal concepts, as well as science-literate readers who are curious about the real theory of General Relativity, at a level beyond a popular science treatment.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐General relativity is wonderfully interesting and extremely important. It is a difficult area to learn well. At one extreme, a lot of popular books avoid all equations and give only imprecise (sometimes incorrect) qualitative notions of what it all means. These are not very good. At another extreme, you might expect to master all of Riemannian geometry and modern manifold theory just to get a start. This is a wonderful little book that manages to find a useful middle ground. It shows you enough of the real mathematics to get you started. That is much more important than it appears because it lets you do further study with more insight concerning what is important. It gives you a very clear notion of what it all means and is certainly the clearest currently available introduction that could lead to useful speculation about quantizing gravity. It is certainly a non-trivial read, but it is clear and concise and, most importantly, correct. Many very useful books are boring to read. You could need lots of coffee. This one is pleasant and will only require as much coffee as you like anyway.

⭐I liked the discussion of Newton’s bucket and the illuminating bits on special relativity.

⭐This is a strange book, after reading it, I feel that the author has failed his readers in all possible ways:The physical ideas are not presented in a transparent way, math is not explained clearly either. I don’t quite know what kind of the readershipis in the author’s mind. It is certainly not for an expert, but for an amateur, the book is too vague to geta clear idea.

⭐I have a background in physics (but not general relativity) and math (but not differential geometry). This book starts out well, but when I got to the part about geodesics, it’s almost as if the author gave up trying to actually explain anything. To say he skips steps is an understatement. He uses notation without explaining it and leaves what might have been useful examples as exercises.Based on my experience so far I would say this book is not particularly useful unless you already understand Riemannian geometry. I would think that describes a rather small subset of potential readers.

⭐I am interested in the philosophy of reality since I started with Niels Bohr Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge when it was written in Danish, decades ago. Mathematic? I know 2 + 2 makes 4. but this book very readable and gives me a deeper understanding of existence in the front of understanding

⭐This book is not for those who are not well-versed in the GR formalism. And by “well-versed” I mean graduate-level differential geometry. However, for those who are thoroughly comfortable with the math, this is an excellent overview to consolidate/condense your “big-picture” understanding of GR and its applications. The book is brief, yes, but that is only because it assumes a ton of background knowledge on the reader’s part. In that way it’s like a friendlier version of Dirac’s GR book, which I also recommend to the same audience.

⭐Why would Amazon sell me a Kindle book that is not compatible with my Kindle?I can read this on my iPhone but not the Kindle.The book might be wonderful; it’s Amazon that is lacking here.

⭐Others have written about the book’s shortcomings (eg, tossing out complex notation without explaining it). I’ll leave that debate for them.I don’t understand why the publisher decided to use 9-point font with big margins (40% of the page is margins; I measured everything because I thought it might be my imagination).So regardless of the text itself, the publisher seems to have been trying to make the book unreadable for other reasons.

⭐Purchased a physical copy of this book; I hate poorly-rendered maths formulae on my Kindle, and did not want to take the risk here.Amazon is – as usual – amazing as per the overall quality of service (packaging, costs, delivery time, …).This book from the famous physicist Dr Rovelli provides a succint, yet comprehensive, overview of the General Relativity.If you are a laymen or a beginner, you may find some arguments difficult to grasp and some implications hard to follow. This said, considered it took decades to physicists to work out and understand the nitty-gritty details, I suppose it not a big deal.Conversely, Dr Rovelli provides high-level description and interpretation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, which are uncommon to find, very well written and enjoyable … to the interested reader.Do not judge the book by its thickness: just like any other book of Physics, the density of concepts is pretty high.If you are instead somewhat familiar with GR, you may find the book very interesting as well: both as a quick reference and as an overall review of the not-so-basic concepts and interpretation of the theory.And if you look well, you can find and enjoy the tricky and juicy bits too.Definitely recommended.(cannot say about the rendering of the Kindle edition)

⭐Normally enjoy Carlo Rovelli’s books. Clear, interesting and very little maths.This one gets bogged down in maths and geometry, right form the start.Shame really.

⭐I love how Rovelli explains this complex subject. As an introduction to general relativity and an exploration of the philosophical basis, he has done an excellent job.

⭐Carlo lists Einsteins work on general relatively

⭐Great book,good condition delivered on time

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