From: hees@fias.uni-frankfurt.de   
      
   On 10/06/18 09:36, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:   
   >> [Moderator's note:  There is a new edition of MTW out, at a reasonable   
   >> price to boot.  -P.H.]   
   > On the one hand, this book is one of many books on general relativity.   
   > On the other hand, it's one of the larger ones, one of the first   
   > comprehensive books on the subject, and has very much its own style.  It   
   > very much emphasizes the geometric approach.  This is something of a   
   > matter of taste, with its supporters and detractors, though many readers   
   > but also writers of other books who didn't like this approach back in   
   > the day have now changed their minds.   
   >   
   > The new version was published in 2017 by Princeton University Press,   
   > ISBN 978-0-691-17779-3.  It includes a new foreword and preface, which   
   > also discuss how the book was received back in the day (the original was   
   > published in 1973).  The main text itself is unchanged.  This is not   
   > really a disadvantage; only the stuff on cosmology is severely dated,   
   > and of course that on gravitational waves doesn't take modern   
   > developments into account.  (One of the authors, Kip Thorne, received   
   > part of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on gravitational   
   > waves.)  The additional material tells the reader what is not up to date   
   > and includes references for those who want to bring themselves up to   
   > date.   
   >   
   > At just £49.999/$60 for 1280 pages in large format---hardback, no   
   > less---it is very reasonably priced.   
   >   
   > Note: This description draws heavily from a review of the book by Alan   
   > Heavens in The Observatory, 138, 1264, 130--131, 2018.   
      
   Just to add an opinion: The original "phone book", although of course   
   outdated concerning cosmology and other newer developments in GR, it's   
   still a masterpiece in the didactics of GR, explaining also the modern   
   mathematics in terms of Cartan's form calculus. For a general textbook   
   on theoretical physics it's in my opinion more important to be   
   up-to-date with the math rather than with specialized topics, which you   
   cannot keep up with the development of the science, particularly if you   
   have a topic like cosmology and gravitational waves which are "hot" for   
   decades or just a few years, respectively.   
      
   If you like the geometrical style (of which I'm not too fond to be   
   honest, but "geometric" being understood in the sense of Klein's program   
   is an important way of thought in modern theoretical physics anyway),   
   there's a new book   
      
   Kip S. Thorne, Roger D. Blandford, Modern Classical Physics, Princeton   
   University Press (2017)   
      
   covering also the most recent developments in GR, but not only that. It   
   rather gives a coherent picture of "Classical Physics", where   
   "classical" means "non-quantum", i.e., it cover all of classical physics   
   from Newtonian to the general relativistic realm, and it's very clear in   
   the fundamental subjects which in my experience provides pretty severe   
   problems for students starting to learn relativity, e.g., the fact that   
   the classical phase-space distribution function f(x,p) with the   
   four-momentum being onshell, i.e., obeying p.p=m^2 c^2 is a Lorentz   
   scalar field defined on phase space, as are temperature and chemical   
   potentials scalar fields in the case of local thermal equilibrium are   
   explained very carefully.   
      
   Of course, there are chapters on gravitational waves as well as   
   cosmlogy.   
      
   It's again a heavy book with ober 1500 pages. In the German amazon it's   
   listed at a price of €92.97 which is good, given that its of   
   high-quality colored print.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)