Gravitation (book)

Gravitation

Authors	Charles W. Misner Kip S. Thorne John Archibald Wheeler
Cover artist	Kenneth Gwin
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	General relativity
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	W. H. Freeman Princeton University Press
Publication date	1973, 2017
Media type	Print
Pages	li + 1279
ISBN	0-7167-0344-0
OCLC	585119
Dewey Decimal	531/.14
LC Class	QC178 .M57

Gravitation is a widely adopted textbook on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, written by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler. It was originally published by W. H. Freeman and Company in 1973 and reprinted by Princeton University Press in 2017. It is frequently abbreviated MTW (for its authors' last names). The cover illustration, drawn by Kenneth Gwin, is a line drawing of an apple with cuts in the skin to show the geodesics on its surface.

The book contains 10 parts and 44 chapters, each beginning with a quotation. The bibliography has a long list of original sources and other notable books in the field. While this may not be considered the best introductory text because its coverage may overwhelm a newcomer, and even though parts of it are now out of date, it remains a highly valued reference for advanced graduate students and researchers.^[1]