Selected Product:
| General Relativity
Paperback
Author: Robert M. Wald
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Release Date: 1984-06-15
ISBN-10: 0226870332
ISBN-13: 9780226870335
List Price: $45.00
Average Customer Rating:
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"Wald's book is clearly the first textbook on general relativity with a totally modern point of view; and it succeeds very well where others are only partially successful. The book includes full discussions of many problems of current interest which are not treated in any extant book, and all these matters are considered with perception and understanding."—S. Chandrasekhar
"A tour de force: lucid, straightforward, mathematically rigorous, exacting in the analysis of the theory in its physical aspect."—L. P. Hughston, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Truly excellent. . . . A sophisticated text of manageable size that will probably be read by every student of relativity, astrophysics, and field theory for years to come."—James W. York, Physics Today
Almost perfect
| Customer Rating: | This book has the best treatment of GR that I have run across so far. Mathmatically, it is good enough to learn the basic principles of RG from, however, it is by no means a 'dense' math text. A text like J M Lee's Introduction to Smooth Manifolds is a good companion to understanding the finer points of the math involved. What it amounts to is that Wald teaches RG like college physics texts teach calculus. Good enough to do things with, but no substitute for a Calculus course. This is not a criticism of the text - it is not Wald's purpose to teach us the finer points of RG here. What Wald does, he does extremely well.
I would earnestly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn GR provided that they pick up a good RG text like Lee's Intro to Smooth Manifolds. Carroll's GR book is also to be recommended as side reading. Carroll's book is not as rigorous as Wald's (in fact, Carroll's book often defers to Wald's - eg. when showing where Christoffel symbols come from). The way I see it, Carroll and Wald form a Griffiths and Jackson pair of undergrad and graduate texts for GR. |
Excellent text for classical general relativity
| Customer Rating: | Wald's book was the standard text for two graduate courses in GR that I took during my PhD (one was an introductory grad course on GR and the other was an advance special topics course on black holes). The first six chapters lay the groundwork for classical GR, starting with a quick recap of the tensor notation (Wald's Index free notation is very useful), a little bit of differential geometry and the Einstien's equations. The Initial value problem of GR is treated in an elegant chapter that concludes the introduction. Advanced topics like black holes, area theorems, singularity theorems etc are treated in latter chapters, along with a nice chapter on QFT in curved space-time and the Hawking effect. I found Wald's book most useful for understanding the singularity theorems, which have been discussed very lucidly without sacrificing much rigor (some of the more technical details are best left to Hawking and Ellis).
There is a priceless discussion on Penrose diagrams, asymptotic infinity, ADM energy and the BMS group which to my knowledge have never appeared in another book (one has to go back to papers of Ashtekar and Penrose to find this information).
I had no prior exposure to differential geometry when I started reading the book (indeed my background at this point was an undergrad degree in Electronics, so my knowledge of physics when I took this course was rudimentary to say the least). I however found no difficulty in following this book, and indeed this book was the most exciting grad level book that I read until Polchinski's two tomes on String Theory. I would recommend Wald's book for anyone who likes to understand General Relativity and especially Black Hole Thermodynamics...and last but not least, the exercises in the book are all interesting and in some cases are pretty nontrivial. I learnt a lot of GR working out these exercises and highly recommend them to anybody studying this book...it is definitely worth spending time on these exercises.
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Clear and Concise
| Customer Rating: | Wald's book stands out as the clearest presentation of general relativity yet produced. The downside is that the conciseness often makes it inaccessible to the beginner. If you try to learn from this book, you *need to do exercises* (from this book or another). It is too hard to follow if you don't have the experience of computations under your belt. But once you do get to the point where you follow Wald, you will follow him easily and pleasurably, as he writes with effortless clarity.
A common myth is that this book is overly mathematical. On the contrary--some of the highlights are where Wald discusses the role of Mach's principle in Einstein's formulation of the theory, and the role of our "philosophical projudices" in our choice of cosmology. Wald's talent is the ability to state the interesting physical or philosophical stuff without having to ramble on like other authors. |
Daunting at first...
| Customer Rating:  | The book starts out well and then quickly becomes a refresher in topology! Not a great first text on general relativity if your higher math is shakey but as it progresses it becomes easier to read. Stable, concise, an exceptional work full of wonderful graphs, equations, and description.
Not for the beginner or the merely curious, this is a book for the serious student pursuing relativity in context of astrophysics, cosmology, or some similar discipline. |
Great advanced general relativity book
| Customer Rating: | For about twenty years this book has more or less been a standard text that almost anyone seeking a deep understanding of general relativity should master. There is a good reason for that, it's a great book.
The first half of the book covers the basics of general relativity. The approach is very geometrical, this is essential for a deep understanding of general relativity and to understand almost any of the literature. However, there is a practical issue with a geometric approach, the notation used in some books is such that it's very difficult for a reader to write the equations down on a piece of paper. For example, how can someone write an equation and make the symbols bold? Abstract index notation is used throughout this book. I think that is a great choice allowing one to write the equations using paper and a pen, but without sacrificing anything from the geometrical perspective.
The book opens with a short chapter on special relativity, obviously it's not a very comprehensive treatment, but rather it's intended to establish notation and a point of view. After this there is a two chapter introduction to differential geometry. This material is needed for even the most basic concepts of general relativity. Some of the more advanced concepts of general relativity, e.g. causal structure, require knowledge of topology. Topology is treated in one of the very useful appendices. Wald's treatment of differential geometry and topology is excellent if you already have a fairly good grasp of these subjects, perhaps not so much if it's the first time you've seen them. I'd suggest readers uninitiated in these topics read a more basic introduction while, or before, reading this book.
The rest of the first part consists of developing Einstein's equation, some cosmological solutions and the Schwarzschild solution. These topics are covered in virtually all general relativity books, however the treatment here is especially superb.
The second part of the book consists of the advanced topics, as much as I liked the first part in my opinion it's the second part of the book that really makes Wald's book stand out. In brief the contents are: more systematic methods used for solving Einstein's equation (these are mostly centered on using symmetry), causal structure of space-time (an essential topic for many aspects of general relativity), the initial value problem, asymptotic flatness, black holes, spinors and quantum effects.
These are all very well done, up to the standard established in the first part of the book. I especially appreciated the chapters on asymptotic flatness and spinors since these topics seem to be included in text books less frequently than the others. The quantum effects chapter also stood out. It covered a wide range of interesting topics (although some of them only briefly): semiclassical gravity, general issues in quantum gravity, non-renormalizability of the covariant perturbative approach, twistors (!), quantum field theory in curved space-time and of course black hole thermodynamics.
Does it have any weaknesses? One could argue that it would be nice to see more material on experimental confirmation of general relativity. However, I thought the amount of material on this was fine. It might not be the ideal first book on general relativity, without an exceptional instructor many students seeing the subject for the first time might find the pace a little fast.
To summarize, I think this is a great book, it's my favorite book on gravity. I consider it virtually required reading for an advanced understanding of general relativity. However, I would suggest supplementary texts be used for differential geometry and topology. |
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