NB. I was sent this book as a review copy.

From Princeton University Press

In the era when our eyes are being opened to the Universe in the gravitational spectrum via the recent gravitational wave observations, this book is exactly what is needed to communicate to the general public the beauty and depth of Einstein’s theory of gravity, as well as the interplay between gravity and quantum mechanics which takes place at the event horizon of a black hole.

Starting with the observations of merging black holes black in 2016, Tony Zee takes the reader on a clear and swift journey through the ideas of the incredible weakness of gravity, the basics of field theory, relativity, curved space-times, quantum weirdness, black holes and Hawking radiation, back, full circle to the consequences of General Relativity including the existence of gravitational waves and the detectors now observing them and those which will give us a far clearer picture of the gravitational universe in the near future.

Tony Zee has an ability to take a complex topic and to break it down to the right level for just about any audience, be it a textbook which takes a graduate student into the depths of quantum field theory, or the interested lay-person into the wonderful world of gravitational wave detection. I know of few other authors out there who can gauge their audience so well.

This is a lovely little book which is a perfect dip into this realm of physics which we are now, for the first time, able to see with some of the most technologically marvellous experiments imaginable. For anybody with a desire to understand what is happening at the forefront of our exploration of the universe, this is a perfect start.