{"id":7174,"date":"2011-07-20T08:07:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T15:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=7174"},"modified":"2011-07-20T08:07:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T15:07:50","slug":"five-books-on-relativity-and-cosmology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/20\/five-books-on-relativity-and-cosmology\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Books on Relativity and Cosmology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A website called <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/\">The Browser<\/a> has been doing a fun collection of interviews, where they ask experts in different fields to recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/fivebooks\/archive\">five books<\/a>, either starting points for non-experts or books that they were influenced by themselves.  Read <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/randall-grahm-on-wine\">Randall Grahm on wine<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/jim-shepard-on-short-stories\">Jim Shepard on short stories<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/deborah-blum-on-science-society\">Deborah Blum on science and society<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/qiu-xiaolong-on-classical-chinese-poetry\">Qiu Xiaolong on classical Chinese poetry<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>They <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/sean-carroll-on-cosmology\">asked me about relativity and cosmology<\/a>, and I decided it would be more helpful to pick recent books that would bring people up to date rather than go for the classics I was reading back in the 70&#8217;s.  Some of these books aren&#8217;t light reading, but it&#8217;s a matter of dedication rather than preparation; I think an interested and intelligent person who didn&#8217;t know anything about relativity or cosmology could read these and come away with some deep insights.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41N2Q16A48L._SL160_.jpg\" alt=\"Image of The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality\" height=\"160\" width=\"105\" \/><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/419HmsH6akL._SL160_.jpg\" alt=\"Image of The Inflationary Universe\" height=\"160\" width=\"103\" \/><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51CKNPB20tL._SL160_.jpg\" alt=\"Image of Einstein&#039;s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe\" height=\"160\" width=\"107\" \/><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51TVNDGY%2BTL._SL160_.jpg\" alt=\"Image of Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein&#039;s Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program)\" height=\"160\" width=\"106\" \/><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51onxnIJHdL._SL160_.jpg\" alt=\"Image of The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics\" height=\"160\" width=\"103\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>For more thoughts, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrowser.com\/interviews\/sean-carroll-on-cosmology?page=full\">the full interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> for obvious reasons, it wouldn&#8217;t be considered quite kosher to recommend one&#8217;s own books in an interview like this.  This has led to the misimpression that I think my books are less than the very best.  Not so!<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eternity-Here-Quest-Ultimate-Theory\/dp\/0452296544\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2011\/07\/51RbOFl7htL.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"296\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7185\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Spacetime-Geometry-Introduction-General-Relativity\/dp\/0805387323\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2011\/07\/4135JPY7A3L.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"249\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7186\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A website called The Browser has been doing a fun collection of interviews, where they ask experts in different fields to recommend five books, either starting points for non-experts or books that they were influenced by themselves. Read Randall Grahm on wine, Jim Shepard on short stories, Deborah Blum on science and society, or Qiu [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}