The Curvature of Spacetime: Newton, Einstein, and Gravitation

Although this book is a general public level presentation in the fields of special and general relativity, it reads like a novel, presents many historically accurate facts about the lives of two famous individuals - Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton - and presents the material in an extraordinarily understandable manner. A good comparison would be the popular work of Stephen Hawking, albeit with a little more math than most of Hawking's. All in all, an enjoyable read and an easy way to increase one's comprehension of several difficult concepts. John Brady

In general, I am not particularly fond of books that explain physical concepts in this format. Through coversations with Newton, Einstein, and a fictional physicist named Haller we are given the priviledge of learning the basics of newtonian gravity, the special and general relativity, the standard model, and cosmology. Once I started reading the book I could not put it down. The real gems are found in passages that explain the concepts of the metric and spacetime cuvature. I also found the chapter on the origin of mass particularly interesting. I rate this material five stars because the conversational style of Dr. Fritzsch's book worked eceptionally well in this case. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.