The special theory of relativity is not well explained either this could have been done clearly and briefly. As Dodson, and others, have shown these crucial ideas about curvature can be quite well explained to the lay public. The notion of ‘curvature’ is not explained, not even a reference is given, and yet things such as the Ricci tensor are mentioned. These errors arenot disturbing, but what isdisturbing isthat hardly any attempt has been made to explain the basic ideas underlying the structure of black holes. The book contains a number of technical errors that I shall list at the end of this review. There is a tremendous amount of detail about the exciting structure of space-time associated with black holes. The text is well written and contains a large number of attractive illustrations several of which are original. These ideas have to do with the structure of the universe on a larger scale (cosmology) and on a somewhat smaller scale (hypothetical black holes). Reviewed by Hendrik Van Dam* This book concerns a topic that should be of interest to any lay person: the present ideas of physicistsand astronomers about the structure of space and time. Thosc who would like to be added to Leonardo’s panel of reviewers should write to the FounderEditor. In general, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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