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J. B. Hartle
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Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity Hardcover – 26 December 2002

by James Hartle (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 64
Edition: 1st
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There is a newer edition of this item:

Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity: Pearson New International Edition
Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity: Pearson New International Edition
$110.00
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Einstein's theory of general relativity is a cornerstone of modern physics. It also touches upon a wealth of topics that students find fascinating—black holes, warped spacetime, gravitational waves, and cosmology. Until now, it has not been included in the curriculum of many undergraduate physics courses because the required math is too advanced. The aim of this ground-breaking new text is to bring general relativity into the undergraduate curriculum and make this fundamental theory accessible to virtually all physics majors. Using a "physics first" approach to the subject, renowned relativist James Hartle provides a fluent and accessible introduction that uses a minimum of new mathematics and illustrates a wealth of applications. Recognising that there is typically not enough time in a short introductory course for the traditional, math-first, approach to the subject, Hartle presents a physics-first introduction to general relativity that begins with the essential physical applications.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0805386629
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0805386622
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Pearson
  5. Publication date
    26 December 2002
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    19.81 x 4.06 x 24.13 cm
  8. Print length
    608 pages
  9. See all details
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Product description

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

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pearson; 1st edition (26 December 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 608 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0805386629
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0805386622
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 19.81 x 4.06 x 24.13 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 64

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J. B. Hartle

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RICARDO RIIUITI KAMEOKA
4.0 out of 5 stars O melhor do gravidade.
Reviewed in Brazil on 14 November 2020
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É excelente para área de gravitation...
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!
Reviewed in Italy on 2 February 2021
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I was looking for a book for a complete introduction to General Relativity and this is the one! Others start with difficult math, while this gradually introduces it and explains the physical facts first. Excellent book!
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Guillermo Rojas
1.0 out of 5 stars No llegó
Reviewed in Mexico on 27 February 2019
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No llegó el libro y no lo han reembolsado
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on 3 November 2017
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ok
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I am falling in love with my life
5.0 out of 5 stars Explanations are in detail, but confusing in some parts.
Reviewed in the United States on 20 November 2016
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"This is an excellent introduction to general relativity with a hands-on approach that is based on physical situations of interest like black holes and the expanding universe. It fills a real gap in the literature for an undergraduate or graduate student course book" - Stephen Hawking

Hartle's "Gravity" is a textbook for learning general relativity. On the back cover of the book, there are a lot of praises for the book from famous physicists including Stephen Hawking's.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and the reading was beneficial. The book contains many topics with detailed explanations in more than 500 pages. Considering that, as the author says in the preface, the book aims at guiding undergraduate students to general relativity, its plentiful explanations are great merits. However, the book has some shortcomings. If you feel comfortable only with mathematics textbooks that are written logically and systematically, then the book can be uncomfortable for you.

The book consists of three parts. The first part introduces the readers to the basics of relativity only with elementary mathematics. The second part is about applications of relativity. For example, the book explains how general relativity explains motions of solar system by showing that Newtonian mechanics is an approximation of general relativity that can explain things more accurately. In addition, light rays under gravitational field, gravitational waves, black holes, and cosmology are discussed under the relativistic point of view.

But when we use general relativity in the first two parts to analyse real physical situations, that does not mean we solve problems directly from the Einstein equation. There is a special solution of the Einstein equation, called Schwarzschild metric. By applying this metric to situations like planets in solar system and black holes, we study those things.

The third part introduces the Einstein equation and its related mathematics. However, even in this part, we don't solve the Einstein equation. Solving the Einstein equation explicitly seems to be a hard thing.

As I mentioned, the book's explanation is confusing in many places. For example, it is when introducing new mathematical stuffs like scalar product in the first part, and Christoffel symbols and covariant derivatives in the third part. Before reading the book, I have read two relativity books, Peter Collier's, and Ellis and Williams's. In reading such parts, the experience of reading the two books were really helpful. In particular, Collier's book was good.

For the third part, I just can give three or four stars. I think that the mathematics like covariant derivative and Riemann curvature tensor is neither easily explained nor dealt with in depth. I have a plan to read another relativity book like Foster and Nightingale's "A Short Course in General Relativity". But for the first two parts, although there are many confusing parts, I want to give them five stars. They contain many valuable topics. I want to give an example.

Consider a non-rotating black hole. Then the geometry around the black hole is described by a global coordinate (t, r, theta, phi) with a metric called the Schwarzschild metric. The motion of a particle can be described by (t(time), r(time), theta(time), phi(time)). The particle has some energy and momentum. Suppose I am in a rocket moving around the black hole. My motion will be described by (t'(time), r'(time), theta'(time), phi'(time)). To me, the energy and momentum of the particle will not be the same with things under the black hole's point of view. The book teaches the readers how to calculate them. More than that, the explanation is conceptual and concrete. Reading the part was really enjoyable.

Here are some other points.

1. When Hawking said "it fills a real gap in the literature for an undergraduate or graduate student course book.", I think that the gap is between freshmen physics textbooks containing special relativity and graduate textbooks like Wald's "General relativity". To read the book, you should know at least the basics in special relativity.

2. The book has nearly 600 pages. Most of the readers would not have enough time to read the whole book. The wise readers should choose what to read. There is an appendix entitled Pedagogical Strategy. It was helpful in planning my reading. I recommend the readers to use the appendix also.

3. There are some typos in the book. When you get stuck somewhere, it may be because the author is not so skillful in explaining the topic or because there is a typo. Assume the results, just skip, and move forward.

4. The variational principle for a free particle (with mass) says that the world line of a free particle between two timelike separated points extremizes the proper time between them. For a photon (that has no mass), we cannot say about proper time. Then, what is the principle for a photon that explains the world line of a photon? You may think that it is ds^2 = 0. But I think this is not enough. For energy and momentum to be conserved, there should be one more principle. Regarding this issue, the book doesn't seem to give the answer.

5. The good quality of the papers of the book saved a lot of my eye's fatigue. It doesn't reflect lights. I hope that other textbooks use this kind of papers.
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