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Comment by octed | Hacker News Reader

For those who would like a print version, this manuscript eventually got published as Modern Classical Physics https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691159027/mo...

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I was weighing up (...) buying a copy of this the other day, in a physical bookshop. The thing was so big I couldn't actually buy it.

There has always been commentary that the size (over 1300 pages) of the General Rel book Gravitation by Meisner Thorne and Wheeler was done for demonstration purposes. Apparently, modern versions are only 2.5" thick which leads me to believe they must be on incredibly thin paper. I remember it being about 4-5".

https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...

Maybe tome size a Kip thing?

The thing with MTW is that it's so big that it's quite hard to really mull over it (for me at least).

it's a book that I can imagine reading a lot in a very quiet world (i.e. basically a dorm or library before phones or computers) but it's very hard to actually get my teeth into it without that.

Yeah, unless you're taking a class like ph236 covering the material it's just absurd.

I hadn't realized it, but it looks like this new book is for ph136 the junior level (1st year grad) general rel prep class.

https://www.its.caltech.edu/~esp/ph136b/text.html

"General relativity for the gifted amateur" just came out by the way. I suspect an instant classic. I am very rusty so shall be going through it.

Interesting that they changed the author order to put Kip Thorne first... marketing?

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