Rating: 
Summary: Is it really that Bad?
Review: As a student in the same physics class of those people who placed 1-star reviews, I feel obliged to defend this book a little bit. Yes, it is sometimes not the most rigorous book on this planet. Yes, it does sometimes get a bit wordy. For all these weaknesses however, I still found it to be a very good introduction to relativity. Unlike many books which go the other way around, this book begins with the idea of an invariant spacetime interval and goes from there into deriving the Lorentz equations. It also does an excellent job of explaining many of the paradoxes which seem to undermine relativity and how these problems have been handled. These paradoxes formed the basis for many homework questions, some of which I found to be as helpful for learning relativity as the chapters themselves. If you are looking for a strong thoretical introduction to special relativity, this may not be the book for you. If you're a non-major who is just interested in the subject, I would recommend it, just with the reservations I mentioned above on the rigor.
Rating: 
Summary: terrible
Review: I don't understand why anyone would want to use this book to study SR. It is ridiculously long winded -wasting pages to describe a paradox in elaborate detail. You're probably thinking "oh good, a physics book that's not dry... before you take the advice of a positive reviewer, check it out from the library and see what I mean. It is so convoluted with silly detail that it's almost unreadable. If you're a high school student interested in grasping a piece of SR then MAYBE this could be of use. If you're a physics student who wants to learn something at a reasonable pace, look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: I found the narrative style to be more confusing than clarifying. Also, some of the exercises were very difficult to work out and the text was not helpful as a resource.
This book should <font size="+3" color="red">not</font> be purchased unless you are taking a course in SR. It purports to be written for the non-physicist, but I can't imagine my mother understanding it at all, regarless of her level of interest. If you are taking a course, the paradoxes are challenging and interesting.
Rating:
Summary: occasionally interesting, but poorly written and dumbed-down
Review: I had to read this book for the first part of Phys 1b, as did the other reader below. It goes into more depth about the paradoxes, etc., than most books for the general audience, but the book is also dumbed down, includes strange and confusing metaphors, and says in 10 or 20 pages what could have been said in a paragraph. I have less Physics background than most other people in my class, so some of the material was new and interesting, but even so, the book was poorly written and rather condescending. That damn, smug b---d of a talking bird!
Rating: 
Summary: The Physics Book Hall of Fame
Review: I have only the first edition, however, the fundamental concepts of invariance of the (space-time) interval and the curvature of spacetime defining gravitation are presented in an intuitive way (other comments notwithstanding). This book, followed by Gravitation and Gravitation and Inertia all co-authored by John Archibald Wheeler (Princeton Univ), constitute a classic trilogy in gravitation, relativity, physics, and methods of thinking. If you think this book is a baby book, pick up one of the other two. If you think it's too hard you need to do some elemental studying. If you think this book fails to make these concepts intuitive, you haven't understood it. It is not intended for those who don't like to reason nor for those who dislike math. Between this book and the other two should lie several courses in calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, differential forms, and possibly a lower level differential geometry course. As Feynman would say, "this is how the world works".
Rating:
Summary: A bit dissapointed.
Review: I purchased this book in order to get a good introduction into relativity.I found it a bit dissaponting though as in my opinion the style and contents of the book do not match the intellectual abilities and achievements of its authors.I recommend borrowing the book first from a library before buying it.
Rating:
Summary: Theory of Relativity with little Calculus
Review: I read the first edition of this book some time ago. I thought the first edition was excellent in that it had many interesting examples and problems at the end of each chapter. The second edition went further! The book has as many updated examples, and problems as the original. The second edition also has many interesting interjected Q and As, which are probably the summary of real Q and As that took place in the university classrooms. The Q and As will be valuable for teachers using the book as the textbook, but will be also useful reminder to the seasoned physicists or students who are refreshing the knowledge, of the some of the pitfalls novice students may face. I have found some of the Q and As very interesting since I have never thought about some of the seemingly paradoxical issues raised by the interjected questions before. The book tries to do away with calculus as much as possible. I think this reflects the sad stateof math education at the high school level in North America.Given the limit of the assumed math adeptness of the target readers, this book achieved a lot. I have tried to solve the problems at the end of the chapters during my commute time on the train.Since I could solve most of them over the course of a few weeks in my commute time, the problems are not too difficult for novice students. Yet they give good insights and the handle to utilize thebasic formulas available in the theory of relativity. I found only one(!) typo in this book. There could be more, but this is an exceptional accomplishmentfor the type of physics book. I can't find any easier book that I can recommend to the novice physics students who want to learn the basic of the theory of relativity and how to utilize the basic ideas in analyzing relativistic phenomena: especially to students who are studying calculus in parallel. Once they master calculus, theycan move onto other books with introduction to the general theory of relativity.But even then, they will find that this book is unique in the large number of problems andmany "paradoxes" raised and answered. One of the paradoxes is, if I recall correctly, repeatedin a April Fool's day edition of Martin Gardner's columnin Scientific American back in the 1970's. I was an undergraduate student of physics then, andrecall discussing the apparent paradox with the fellow students. By the way, I picked up the Japanese translation of the first edition of the book some years ago and found it very interesting and this is why I bought the second edition and how the book has incorporated the knowledge gained since the first edition appeared about 20 years (?) ago. The book has nicely accommodated the newer knowledge. The only other introductory book I can recommendis Tatsuo Uchiyama's Special Theory of Relativity (in Japanese) and that book uses calculus more thanthe book reviewed here. So again, to the really novice student without caluclus background,the book is the only choice I can give. The reason I didn't give the best score 10 is that I found the top-down approach ofgiving the established laws first and give examples and working exercies later a little counter-intuitive.But I think most of the readers are already familiar with historical stuff by reading otherbooks such as Gamov's, and are now at a stage to learn eagerly the working of knowledge of the theory of relativity. So this is a minor quibble on mine, I guess. Highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: Intuitive guide to relativity
Review: I use this book as a supplement to an online relativity class at drphysics.com. Students love this book because it explains the concepts of relativity clearly and without unnecessary mathematical complication. Introductory physics classes have been using this book (including the earlier edition) for decades. Don't be fooled: while it is accessible to students at the elementary level, it is useful for readers at all levels. Not only is John Wheeler a consummate theoretician, he is also a gifted teacher. The solved examples were carefully chosen to elucidate key points. The remaining exercises will help the reader understand special relativity in great depth. The first edition of _Spacetime Physics_ was written before the classic general relativity text _Gravitation_ by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. The same brilliant exposition methods were used in the much thicker general relativity text. Both books belong in every physicist's library.
Rating:
Summary: Well presented and excellent for self-study
Review: I used this book to begin my mathematical study of Relativity (and am now working my way through the author's next book, Exploring Black Holes). This book is an excellent introduction into the field from a mathematical perspective, with an excellent presentation, interesting problem sets, and solutions for the odd numbered problems in the back (which is great for learning on your own). The prose is highly readable, and uses very accessible terminology to help the reader understand "what is really going on." In its course, Taylor and Wheeler present over a dozen "paradoxes" relating to Special Relativity. Several of these appear in the main text, while the remainder appear as problems. I believe my intuition is lacking because I was unable to get the right answer for the paradox problems without working through the math first - although this intuition may come only with further experience. I would have been happy if the authors had included a few more paradox problems with solutions from an "intuition" perspective (as well as a mathematical solutions) to help gain this intuition. The mathematics throughout the book is nothing harder than algebra and the occasional trigonometry, so it should well be accessible to anyone with a high-school calculus understanding of math. One mathematical trick the authors introduce in their next book would be helpful for this one as well: when solving for a number which is only slightly less than one, (as in several of the problems with particles moving near light speed) instead of trying to solve for .9999999999992343, which would be rounded to 1 by most calculators, solve for "1 - X" instead. Scattered copiously throughout the book are solved sample problems which guide the reader through the easier problems, as well as "boxes" which discuss interesting ramifications and related material. The more involved problems often include step by step instructions on how to reach a solution which would otherwise be by no means obvious at first glance (at least, not to me). Many problems deal with actual experiments performed to test and validate relativity. In sum, I cannot find any substantial problems with this book. It is clear, concise, battle-tested (having been originally published over thirty years ago), and an excellent formal introduction into the pardoxical world of Special Relativity. One author maintains a web site at http://www.eftaylor.com/ with, among other material, an interesting article on the writing of this book and his collaboration with John Wheeler. The interested reader can find a history of the development of Special and General Relativity in Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps. PS: Professor Taylor confirms that the answer to sample problem 8-17b in the seventh printing (which I have) is off by a factor of 1000.
Rating:
Summary: The Only Book
Review: If you want easy to grasp concepts and math for Special Theory of Relativity this is the only book. I have been out of college for 20 years (now a surgeon) and for some odd reason wanted to learn relativity again. This is a great book...wish I had it in college. Spacetime Physics simplifies and elucidates concepts I never really grasped in college. Just wish someone would write a book on General Theory in a simuliar vein.
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