General Relativity

I love this book. It’s a great motivator, and provides clear explanations so far.

Typically good Susskind. He makes General Relativity as gentle as it can be, but no gentler (it does, after all, mean tensors and a bit of differential geometry). I've worked my way through Callahan, Sean Carroll, and Hartle (all recommended), but this book has a fresh and intuitive quality all its own. I can't imagine a more inviting intro for the beginner. And, contrary to another reviewer's somewhat sour point, the gags are unobtrusive and often charming.

Come back when the book has been copy-edited so that it's easier to parse (just basic common-sense edits as a courtesy to the reading comfort of the audience). And lose the stupid gags in the imaginary dialog, such as the play on words around "shedding light"; they just make unnecessary, time-wasting holes in the book, and cause it to hemorrhage credibility. Come back when you've made those changes. Right now I couldn't even make it through the Look Inside preview: it was just unbearable.

Again Susskind gives us the real physics (and math to go along) while keeping the level of difficulty under control. This volume tried my patience more than the others in the TTM series. It drones on for a full 100 pages about multiple coordinate systems and graphical techniques for discussing physics near the horizon of a black hole. Clearly this is Susskind's favorite topic, but was it really necessary to subject the readers to such a degree? Fortunately, he ends on a high note --- finally getting to Einstein's field equations and gravitational waves. Those last two chapters made it all worthwhile.... but I confess my doubts when grinding through page after page of those Penrose diagrams! {BTW, it is inexplicable how a reviewer that admits to not reading so much as the "Look Inside" preview receives "helpful" votes --is ignorance really that helpful?}Afterthought: Eq.(27) on p. 52 is messed up, but readers should be able to correct it.