Rating: 
Summary: The best non mathematical treatment I have seen
Review: A simply superb book. Useful on its own and as an adjunct to a more seriously mathematical book.
Rating:
Summary: A revolutionary view on relativity!
Review: Almost every reader wether academic or non-academic emphasizes the successful popularization of relativity given by Epstein's book but this book goes far beyond that. It offers actually a new revolutionary understanding of relativity by formulating the idea: Everything, including you, is always moving at the speed of light. According to C.L. Epstein this very idea explains why time is moving always at the same rate. Hereby the original Einsteinian concept of a relative time is transcended. Although objects with different velocities are moving with different time rates, time itself (!) moves always at the same rate. Consequently time is somehow absolute as I. Newton originally stated. Hence Epsteins ideas about relativity are running directly against the original position of A. Einstein. They offer the possibility of making the universe less strange and open the door to an aesthetical harmonized world.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anyone interested in relativity
Review: As a Ph.D. in astrophysics, I studied relativity as part of my professional education. I've read many textbooks and popularizations. This is simply the best popularization, bar none. Anyone should be able to understand it. Even the professional physicist is likely to learn something, if not about the substance of relativity, then about how to teach it to undergraduates. Outstanding!
Rating:
Summary: Relativity as Geometry, Like Perspective in Painting
Review: Epstein is the best teacher of this difficult subject you
will ever encounter. His book breaks new ground in relating
space, time, and mass in a geometrical way that is -- at
last -- simple to visualize. Albert Einstein's own book
on relativity, though a model of clarity, does not provide
this all-important geometric model of four dimensional
space/time. Epstein has understood everything that is
difficult for us about relativity at a gut level, and
thoroughly demystifies it, without ever making the kind
of deep conceptual errors to which authors of "popular"
books on physics are apt to be prone.
Through the simplest kind of geometry diagrams and inspired
thought experiments, he shows that relativity's famous
paradoxes are all simply tricks of perspective
characteristic of a universe that has four spatial
dimensions, not three. Relativistic "special effects"
are exactly analogous to perspective effects in painting,
but involve time and a fourth dimension. This geometric
interpretation of relativity is the only way to grasp it
other than algebraically, and therefore it is the only
route that does not involve significant mathematics. Even
to the mathematically inclined, it may provide an
eye-opening intuitive "ah-hah!" that the equations never
elicited. Not since Minkowski proposed his original
geometric interpretation of Einstein's special relativity
has there been such a cogent advance in our perspective
(literally) on the shape of space, and its relation to
time and mass, the three measurable quantities related by
relativity. The reader who finds this book stimulating
should also look at H.S.M. Coxeter's "Regular Polytopes",
the definitive introduction to the Euclidean geometry of
more than three dimensions, which will give him the power
to actually visualize the fourth dimension, if any book
can. In tandem these two writers lay relativity and its
fourth dimension bare.
Rating:
Summary: Truly lives up to the title
Review: I have tried to read several books on the subject of relativity. I am very interested in it as a hobby and have read zillions of explanations of relativity. I read about passing space ships, traveling twins and whistling trains. However, I never truly understood what is was all about, until I came across this book. When I read chapter 4, I couldn't help but giggle aloud and shout "Eureka" all through it, because now I felt I really understood it. For the first time EVER. The illustrations are so vivid, the diagrams so clear and the explanation so simple that anybody can understand it. If you are interested in Einstein's theories, get this book. You won't be disappointed, garantueed.
Rating:
Summary: Ideal introduction to relativity
Review: I owe a lot to this book. I've since gone on to read more advanced books on relativity, quantum physics, and string theory. What makes this book special is that it will make relativity an intuitive concept. As relativity is a foundation for so many other things, I needed a book which would give me a rock solid foundation. The book made relativity so simple that a child would understand it. And not only understand it, but be utterly convinced that it is correct. I now understand how relativity works about as well as I do the law of conservation of energy, as an example.
After you read this, you will want to move on, and I recomment "Quantum Reality". It's not simple like this book, though. I haven't found any books that do for quantum physics what Epstien does for relativity.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful book on conceptualizing special relativity
Review: I'm not a physicist or physics major, but I do like reading physics on a lay-level. When I hit special relativity in college physics, it was no surprise--because I'd read Epstein's book and gotten past the biggest hurdle, being able to conceptualize what's going on. (I can tell you that as far as math goes, special relativity at this level isn't difficult at all as long as you don't get your frames of reference screwed up...which I usually do.) And that's where Relativity Visualized excels: helping you get your brain around these strange, strange, STRANGE ideas. No math. A little geometry, and believe me, you don't need to remember much from HS geometry to make sense of this, if you're curious about relativity. While I've no complaints about my college prof's treatment of relativity :-) this would have helped the poor freshman engineer in my class who, upon learning why the twin paradox isn't a paradox, said in bewilderment, "But that's stupid!" It isn't--it's just hard to accept.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful book on conceptualizing special relativity
Review: I'm not a physicist or physics major, but I do like reading physics on a lay-level. When I hit special relativity in college physics, it was no surprise--because I'd read Epstein's book and gotten past the biggest hurdle, being able to conceptualize what's going on. (I can tell you that as far as math goes, special relativity at this level isn't difficult at all as long as you don't get your frames of reference screwed up...which I usually do.) And that's where Relativity Visualized excels: helping you get your brain around these strange, strange, STRANGE ideas. No math. A little geometry, and believe me, you don't need to remember much from HS geometry to make sense of this, if you're curious about relativity. While I've no complaints about my college prof's treatment of relativity :-) this would have helped the poor freshman engineer in my class who, upon learning why the twin paradox isn't a paradox, said in bewilderment, "But that's stupid!" It isn't--it's just hard to accept.
Rating:
Summary: Great! Lots of diagrams and practical analogies.
Review: I've read it twice. Great for those interested in physics but who are not physicists. Well written. Book builds your knowledge chapter by chapter. Lots of thought problems to check your understanding. Diagrams are very helpful and plentiful. Covers theories preceding and superceding theories of relativity. Very good explanation of string theory.
Rating:
Summary: lucid, simple and breathtaking
Review: It has been a while since I read this book, so I can not review it in detail. After having started it, I could not wait to continue. After finishing, I was so excited that I bought a copy for a friend and the videotape for my children. Having tried to grasp relativity through a number of other texts, including Einstien's own, this book gave me the first (glorious) experience of understanding a good part of it. Although my copy is not hard bound, I have, nevertheless, placed it in a prominent position on my bookshelf.
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