Relativity: Special, General, and Cosmological [Paperback]

This book is an update of the author's previous work "Essential Relativity," although the former book remains available through another publisher. "Essential Relativity" contains interesting (to me) material that had to be omitted from the new volume. The new volume contains necessary updates. The author is a world class scholar, and he gives a very comprehensive introduction to relativity, both special and general. Consequently, every serious student will be forced to purchase this book and study it thoroughly and quite carefully.

As churlish as it may sound, I expect more from a world class scholar, teamed with one of the top technical publishers in the world. Rindler really begins the technical discussion in section 2.7, which is a modest edit of a section from his previous book "Introduction to Special Relativity." In it, he considers a free particle whose trajectory is parameterized by its own particular clock, mu. He then considers the coordinates of two separate inertial references frames. By differentiating by mu, he is able to show that the coordinates of inertial systems have to be linearly related. A page or two later, he has derived the whole Lorentz transformation in quite a lot of detail (not perfect detail). On finding the "truth," we then see that different observers see time sources quite differently. This is not obviously consistent with the original differentiation. For beginning classes, at least, this is at least an unnecessary source of potential confusion. Compare and contrast this ponderous progression with the smooth and economical set up for the Lorentz Transformation that is to be found in the first chapter of Landau and Lifschitz's "Classical Theory of FIelds." It seems, at first, that Landau Lifschitz is at least infinitely better---maybe more. Is Rindler somehow silly, or a person of poor taste? No, that's not at all the case. He makes this choice for a clear pedagogical reason. He wants to show that the principle that physics is the same in all inertial systems is of primary importance and that the invariance of light speed in all inertial frames gives us much less information. Is that true? It could be true (read Landau Lifschitz), but it is, whatever else, the view of an important scholar, and one that every student needs to take seriously---even if it is phrased in quite a laborious and perhaps somewhat self-inconsistent way.

Rindler clearly tries to give the best possible understanding of the physics, apart from the mathematics. In that he certainly gets a partial success, but he seems to me not to get a full success. For that, I could cite his explanation of the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, and space contraction in section 2.4. On the one hand, it is clearly independent of mathematics. On the other hand, I find it labored and unclear---perhaps poorly edited. These are very early examples in the book. To me, the whole book is something like that. It attempts to put full emphasis on the physical view while including only enough mathematics to make everything correct and essentially complete.

It is my own idea that most people will be better served to use the two volumes of N.M.J. Woodhouse (of Oxford University) on special and general relativity as a better, easier, clearer introduction. Woodhouse makes no attempt to sidestep the mathematics, and that is appropriate. There is no actual understanding of relativity apart from the mathematics. So, it makes sense to grin and embrace it. I think his is the clearer and better place to start. For special relativity, the easy book of Taylor and Wheeler is probably better (although maybe a little cheesy). Everyone will need to read Rindler at some stage. Personally, I think it better to leave it as a "have to read"---like it or not. It's aggravatingly unclear in important points. These ought to be something of an obstacle to first learning, although they will not really encumber a sophisticated reader. First become sophisticated with Woodhouse and then you can read Rindler through much more economically and without being bothered on belabored points.

Rindler is actually a world class scholar---a great man. That is not tongue in cheek or some sort of backhanded attempt to insult him. He actually is a great scholar, and I respect that. I expect great scholars to offer better writing than this.

The author does a pretty good job of explaining physical concepts, but is obviously impatient at explaining mathematics. In the chapter on electromagnetism he introduces tensor notation and important theorems such as co- and contra-variance without explanation. In some cases he says "the proof is left to the reader." The treatment is much less detailed than Einstein's original 1915 paper. It is like a book that purports to teach you French, and which summarily presents an abstract French-English dictionary and then the rest of the book is written in French.

I had to use this book for my graduate-level relativity/cosmology course. I managed to do well in the course, but only because my professor was quite willing to devote many office hours to helping students. Do you know what is good to have in a textbook, especially one that introduces highly abstract physics and mathematics like relativity and tensors? EXAMPLES. Rindler just zooms through, introducing abstraction after abstraction with no examples on how to actually use anything. Who is he kidding?

If you don't have a professor with flexible office hours and due dates, this book is worthless.