Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

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.

Difficult read, but what a prize to understand it!

This a quite excellent explanation of the special and general principles of relativity. Einstein breaks this book down into small digestible chunks that take anywhere between ten minutes to half an hour to read. While many people will have looked through Wikipedia and/ or physics texts in an attempt to understand relativity, Einstein explains his counter-intuitive theories in a non-academic, down to Earth and thoroughly understandable manner. My only criticism is that in converting this text into Kindle format, is that the mathematical equations (of which there are admittedly not many) tend to be in small font (which is sometimes difficult to read) and do not lend themselves to re-sizing along with the rest of the text: as such I've only given this four stars. That said if you don't have much time, this is an excellent read that can easily be accommodated bit by bit on one's daily commute.

The biographical notes. The translation was good even including some amusing linguistic differences no doubt to retain some from the original text by Einstein. Nevertheless I did find some explanations unclear requiring me to refer back to previous pages for definitions.

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.

Trying to understand why it is written in old style English, surely it was translated from German? Makes it very difficult to read and understand.

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.

I'd describe it as a "Summary of Einstein's Relativity". It delves into the subject matter, vividly paints you a picture: a mathematical picture

This book is a ripoff. Someone printed some pdf, but it doesn't even contain the images. Instead, it contained the file names (!) of the images.

A relatividade mudou todos os conceitos sobre o universo, e continua válida, proporcionando viagens espaciais

Es un clásico. Observo que en esta edición solo hay cuatro apéndices, cuando en otras hay cinco. (Quinto apéndice "La relatividad y el problema del espacio")

Like no other, Albert Einstein celebrates simplicity combined with imagination and precise, scientific knowledge and methodology to explain the breathtaking, harmonious structure that the universe is based on. WHAT A REVOLUTIONARY, MINDBOGGLING BOOK. THANK YOU!

Ho avuto la sensazione di aver capito perfettamente la teoria della relatività, ma appena ho terminato il libro mi sono accorto che era solo l'effetto illusorio dell'impressionante lucidità di Einstein nell'esporre concetti a lui evidentemente chiarissimi. Mente superiore.