When I was at university the lecturers recommended books on relativity and I even read a few. I gleaned a vague understanding of the subject. None of them recommended Einstein's book. I can't remember where I found it but I'm very glad I did. It's the best and easiest to understand book about relativity I have ever read. I recommend it to students who are struggling with the concepts and all of them so far have had the "Aha!" moment thanks to Albert himself.It's just been returned to me from another student, and I'm planning to re-read it just for fun. Great book. Not too thick, written well, covers the subject well. If you're at all interested in relativity, this is the book for you.

Given Einstein's universally-acknowledged genius and the reputation for intractability still enjoyed by general relativity a century after its birth, this work is a paragon of clarity and simplicity of explication. It is very light on mathematics, only requiring basic algebra, and works almost entirely through illustrative models such as that of an observer on a moving train. Einstein was one of those who had been forced to rethink our universe based on the contradictions raised by the apparent anisotropy of the fixed speed of light in vacuo on a moving Earth. His solution was simple but profound, representing another Copernican revolution, in that he abandoned the twin presuppositions of fixed time and position. As he writes here, everything else in Special Relativity follows as a matter of simple logical consistency, and his new universe is perfectly coherent, if weird.The General form extends this to the abandonment of a fixed coordinate system altogether, hence the name of "General Relativity", but it entails some important further considerations. GR space is Gaussian rather than Euclidean. Its geometry is Riemann, and as a profound consequence we can infer that the Universe is finite but unbounded: Look far enough into distant space and you would see the back of your own head. Hereby is an important inconsistency arising out of Newtonian physics dissolved, as a Newtonian Universe would require a centre and a finite size; a sphere uniformly filled will at sufficient size exert infinite gravitational forces at its bounds. Our Universe can be unbounded and uniformly filled at the largest scales without contradiction. Gravity - and acceleration - also bend space. Measure pi by sitting on a spinning disk and measuring along the circumference and perpendicular across the axis and the foreshortening along the direction of motion will yield a lower than Euclidean value - space has curved for the fly on the wheel.Einstein's work is unquestionably one of the two or three most successful in scientific history. He explains and predicts phenomena that could be observed at the time, such as the precession of Mercury's orbit and the gravitational shift in the positions of stars close to the line-of-sight of the Sun. Yet he also makes predictions which could not have been observed at the time, and I think it is correct to say that all have since been confirmed. QED and QCD might compete with Relativity for predictive and explanatory power, but they were the work of many great minds. Einstein, along with perhaps Newton and Darwin, earns unique credit for being the single mind associated by history with the entire edifice, even if this picture is not entirely fair in all cases. It is a joy to find he also writes so gracefully.As an aside, I just encountered Einstein's name today in a discussion of Muslim behaviour towards non-Muslims. It could be said that the WW2 allies won the war and then the Cold War because we got the best German Jews. We got Einstein, it transpires, via Albania, where virtually all native Jews and thousands of refugees survived the Shoah under the protection of the Muslim majority.

Albert Einstein was a really smart motherfucker. He was smart not just because he was able to conceive of the theory of relativity (both the special and general theories) - he was working on things that people before him had already worked on. What was really smart about him is that he was able to make it all explicable - if not entirely comprehensible - to your average person. I'm not going to go into the general and special theories of relativity, because I honestly only understand the theories in metaphor, and Einstein's metaphors are much more eloquent, nuanced, and specific than mine. Plus, I don't really remember exactly what it was all about. Basically, that Euclidean geometry is always going to fail in the face of a universe that is infinitely more complex than we can possibly imagine. But there are some constants and things you can do with math that help make calculations a lot closer to and reflective of actual observation. Einstein was hoping, I think, for some universal constant, but never got there (or didn't share it, fearing that it would give physicists nothing to do but make little pig statues out of pink erasers and thumbtacks). The math, a lot of it, is far beyond me, but I'm sure the mathematic illustrations and references to quantum physics documents are really helpful to people who know about that stuff. I was a good math student in high school, and a lot of it is still light-years out of my league. But like I said, the important thing about the book is that it explains things without needing the math. Anyone can relate to that feeling of being on a train (or in a car, nowadays), your focal point being the side of a moving car, and feeling as if you're moving backward even though the car beside you has moved forward, when in reality, you're both on the planet Earth, rotating on its axis and around the sun, which is moving in relation to our galaxy, which...you get the point. You can measure the speed of the car moving next to you, giving you that sick feeling in your stomach, but you're never going to get it quite right, except as it relates to wherever you happen to be. Pretty short read, too.

I call it epic book, not only in terms of the knowledge it gives. But it is sure to create a storm of queries and enthusiasm in your mind provided you enjoy mathematics form the core of the heart.It surely imparts some best lessons for life, that keep your subconscious alert and curiosity should be the prime element of every thought process. The thing that Einstein got the idea of relativity while going home in a car, he saw the time in clock mounted on top of church, and it gave him the storm that he is watching that clock because light from the clock reaching his eyes, what will happen if starts travelling exactly at the speed of light, then the light from the clock will never reach his eye every moment and time in the clock will appear to be stopped. This was the the striking point for this great theory.Also liked the explanation. :)"When you sit on the hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour and when you sit with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute, that is relativity."

How dare I give this masterpiece less than 5 stars ?! Although I could hardly claim that I understood 10 percent of the book ! What he was talking about ?! Moving reference bodies, Euclidean geometry, Newtonian theory of gravitation, ..... What ?! We don't see the real length of things as everything is moving in the space ! Length is relative as well as mass ! So what is real ? Is there one single thing that all human can agree on it ?! Relativity can be applied on other aspects of life other than Physics. What is right and what is wrong ? true and false, good and bad, right and left ! Everything depends on your reference body and everything is relative ! What about the keyboard I am using right now, could it be anything else on another planet ?! Creepy Craze ! However, I will try to read more about it. Einstein said "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." yet he couldn't write his theory in a more easier way. I think it would be better if it used more diagrams and drawings ! Good luck for those brave ones who are planning to read this :)