|
You can get the official lectures which inspired most of this book in: http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/9712019 Yes. This book is really a very clear and thorough introduction to modern General Relativity thanks to the very up to date chapters, although the author does not deepen enough in most of the long steps and computations or examples as a real beginner would like but anyway not many books do so. Special Relativity is reviewed but obviously assumed and differential geometry is introduced and developed quite enough but again some familiarity manipulating tensors is assumed (for this the best is to try Schutz's "Geometrical methods"). The layout is really nice and the book is more or less self-contained in every aspect with a "introduction-to-less-than-advanced-level" approach in most aspects. There are no solutions for any exercise (a thumb up for Schutz's book on the same subject) but the worst flaw could be the number of typos for being the first edition, not too many or too important though (and reported in his web). Overall you should buy this book if you know special relativity, undergraduate electrodynamics and notions of tensors because reading and understanding it through is more than enough for having a semi-advanced level in general relativity allowing you to tackle more tough stuff like Wald or Hawking's books. It's one of the latest best books on the subject.
|