A List of Popular Books on General Relativity

These books may well sometimes help you get better intuition concerning the concepts involved in general relativity. They are more at the level of "pillow reading" than anything else, but I have found all of them at least interesting.

    The books are listed in no particular order, but simply as I wrote them down.

  1. Prisons of Light: Black Holes, by Kitty Ferguson, Cambridge Press, 1996.
    Kitty is a successful professional musician, with degrees from the Juilliard School. She is also a friend of Stephen Hawking, and this book grew out of a science fair project jointly with her 8-year old daughter.

  2. Space and Time in Special Relativity, by David Mermin, Waveland Press, 1989 [reprint of McGrawHill, 1969]
    Many details of special relativity explained at a high-school level.

  3. Flat and Curved Space-Times, by Ellis and Williams, Oxford U., 1988.
    A philosophical and metaphysical description of things one ought to have asked, with relevant mathematics as needed.

  4. The Inflationary Universe, by Alan H. Guth; Perseus Books, Reading, Mass., 1997.
    A semi-historical account of how the ideas grew concerning the possibility that the universe had an earlier, inflationary history, written by the person who first published them. (Very easy reading.)

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Last updated/modified: 1 April, 2018