By Sean Carroll Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity (1st Edition) Paperback – 27 Aug. 2013

Worth and interesting concepts

This is an amazing textbook, with the clearest of explanations. I was astounded by how carefully laid out everything was; it made the material easily digestible, even though it's fairly advanced.Moreover, what makes this book such a gem for me, it's that it is the most physically intuitive book out there (Misner-Thorne-Wheeler is the geometrically most intuitive book). I studied GR before reading this, so I did not approach it as a beginner, but when I went through some of the physical discussions of some topics, I could not believe that I learned GR without this kind of physical intuition. This is delightful, as I always considered GR to be a beautiful but mostly mathematical theory (in that the physics gets lost in the equations)!

It starts with mathematics, and slowly builds up to what you need to know to work in the field of general relativity. It is well-written, and thankfully assumes very little knowledge of the subject.If you want a good story, however, and if you would like to see the connection with mechanics, I would recommend Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell by A. Zee. For me this book appeals more to physical intuition and is less mathematical.

This book asks a great deal of the reader. The material on tensors is very short and if you are not already familiar with them you will struggle. Likewise the section on one forms & dual vectors. My head was spinning after reading the material on them. Each page contains so many ideas, new material that I needed to read everything about 10 times before I could move on. In summary I found this book difficult, but then it is a difficult subject. It covers a very wide range and is certainly a comprehensive introduction to the subject. For the expert reader I think. For myself I will persevere as the book has so much of value.

Good physical explanations with good mathematical detail.All aspects well described.Some points are through and hence might be tricky if encountered for the first time in this book.