Relativity: The Special and General Theory Paperback – 3 July 2007

Prior to purchasing this book, one might notice some reviewers pointing out certain editions with poor translations and missing diagrams. The following edition is a good translation with the diagrams included:ISBN 978-1-891396-30-4The book walks the reader through the development of the special and general theories of relativity and the supporting theories they were built upon. Starting with the special theory and its limited applicability and the later development of the more universal general theory, aimed at covering the deficiencies of the former.The first chapters of the book on the general theory of relativity are easy to approach even for those with no background in physics, featuring only little math and easy to relate to examples. More math and complexity comes in the later stages of the book introducing the general theory of relativity and may be hard to grasp even with a basic background in physics.Noticeably the book is a translation and the original language is not English, however its still readable. Its not light reading so be prepared to sit and think in order to really digest and understand the principles. Overall a good basic insight to one of the greatest achievements in physics, which could perhaps benefit from a few extra diagrams for those with a limited background.

When physicists insist on writing nonsense, it is helpful to get it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. With relativity we have to get our heads around the idea that no matter how fast we are moving, we will always measure the speed of light relative to ourselves as exactly the same. This defies the common sense of our daily experience. But, using everyday language and practically no mathematics, Einstein leads us to accept this experimentally confirmed truth in the only way it can be accepted: that our time and our space lengthen or shorten such that the light around us travels at 300,000 of our km per one of our seconds. OK. I'm sure he's right. But, he does another thing in this book which I found most valuable, and that is that he firmly ties the discussion of relativity to empirical reality, so that in the end we might accept relativity with no more fuss than we accept a 30 cm rule for measuring distances and drawing straight lines. One returns to the undergraduate texts much strengthened.

Considering the information contained in this book, the Kindle version was astounding value for money. Thank you for producing this book that was ten times easier to read than I had expected. Everyone who is a scientist should read it.

Well, I admit defeat once again. This stuff is too much for my poor brain! There were instances where I could say, `oh yes` or `ah I see` but they were few. I found as the book progressed that I simply could not read it! A shame, because I am interested in the ideas here. In a way I think that part of the reason I find this subject attractive is that it is so mind blowing, but also so hard to grasp! I have looked at numerous explanations for relativity with time dilation/length contraction etc - and they all tend to repeat the same examples eg twins paradox. Sure, I understand the language they use, but true understanding - to me the whole concept of `understanding` is called into question! So now I have a copy of `Einstein for dummies` which was recommended by someone. Let`s hope I have more success here.

Fascinating if dated book but I couldn't really enjoy it due to the appalling layout, proofing and typography. When you are unsure of the ideas being presented and there are two blatant typo's in the first paragraph you are left uncertain as to whether it is you or just another error. I have come across over a dozen errors already including at one stage incorrectly spelling a chapter title.Its a real shame and I would love to know how this book ever got out of the printers in this condition.Just to show how badly this has been produced the publishers even got their own web address wrong on the back cover

I know I should probably do more research into a product before buying it, but given the low entry price I didn't think twice about buying Einstein's Relativity for £3. DON'T buy this crap, seriously, it's been dreadfully edited by OCR (w/e the hell that is), making it unreadable. The first few chapters may lull you into a false sense of security, sure, there might be a missing diagram or two, but initially that doesn't detract too much from the book. Once the mathematics kicks-in though, you have literally no chance of comprehending any of the equations, they've virtually all been misprinted because apparently the Optical Character Recognition software used to create this book doesn't understand √ signs or anything of that nature.It might not matter for Orwell's 1984 or for Swift's Gulliver's Travels, but for Einstein's Relativity, typos do matter, and I urge whoever makes these dirt cheap books to take Relativity off of their publications list because it is simply unreadable."We have recreated this book from the original using Optical Character Recognition software to keep the cost of the book as low as possible. Therefore, could you please forgive spelling mistakes, missing or extraneous characters that may have resulted from smudged or torn pages?"No, the number of printing mistakes is unforgivable, it's like the person who was tasked with typing it up used a broken keyboard with half of the keys missing. DO NOT buy the dirt cheap copy of this book, it's littered with mistakes, and virtually all of the mathematics is botched. The publishers should either sack their editor or be shut down for unethical practice, because there's no way this book ever have reached (virtual) book shelves.

I couldn't fault it: carefully written with the non-scientist, albeit intelligent reader, it was a joy to appreciate the part played by the mind experiments for which Einstein was so famous. Highly recommended.

General relativity is a theory of space and time. The central idea of general relativity is that space and time are two aspects of spacetime. Spacetime is curved when there is gravity, matter, energy, and momentum. In this book, you will find the anatomy of sentences a little unusual. Well, this should not be a problem considering the theory’s difficulty level.

What a book!What a theory!Hats off to Einstein for giving us the general theory of relativity. This theory is the base of modern physics. Without this, the whole world would stoo working.This book explains this theory very well without going too deep. So normal people can understand.Buy if you are interested in physics and how modern communication and physics works.

This book is very good if you are interested in understanding theory of relativity in simple and lucid way. without much derivation and in a layman language.

This is one hell of a theory from the master himself. Relativity is a confusing theory beyond certain level.[Space Diagrams, Lorentz transform, Simultaneity, Space Time, Gravity, Time dilation, Length contractions] One cannot complete this book if he doesn't share a common interest in the mentioned physics stuffs.Major Con : Language is difficult (compared to stephen hawking books), Need additional materials for referencing.Major Pro : Explained in short & preciseSuggestion : The youtube channel minutephysics explains almost all the topics in this book in a playlist with some great examples & actions.

Very interesting to know he had some learning disability. However with perseverance anything is possible. I’m hoping that my son takes an interest in this book.