BOOKS

Optional Textbooks:

• Edwin F. Taylor & John Archibald Wheeler, Exploring Black Holes,
  Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.
  An elementary introduction to the relativity of black holes, using line elements.
• James B. Hartle, Gravity,
  Addison Wesley, 2003.
  An "examples first" introduction to general relativity, discussing applications of Einstein's equations before presenting the mathematics behind the equations.
• Ray d'Inverno, Introducing Einstein's relativity,
  Oxford University Press, 1991.
  An excellent introduction to general relativity, which also covers some topics not usually seen in introductory texts.
• David McMahon, Relativity Demystified,
  McGraw Hill, 2006.
  An abridged treatment of relativity, containing a remarkably complete collection of formulas and topics, without much derivation. A useful reference.
  OSU owns an electronic copy of this book, which can be accessed here.

Other Books on General Relativity:

• Sean Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity,
  Addison Wesley, 2004.
  An excellent traditional but somewhat sophisticated introduction to general relativity.
• Bernard F. Schutz, A First Course In General Relativity,
  Cambridge University Press, 1985.
  A good, easy introduction to the basics of both tensors and general relativity.
• Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation,
  Freeman, San Fransisco, 1973.
  The physicist's bible of general relativity. Exhaustively complete.
• Robert M. Wald, General relativity,
  University of Chicago Press, 1984.
  The best available introduction to general relativity for advanced students, but uses sophisticated notation (which has become the standard for researchers in the field).
• Rainer K. Sachs, General relativity for mathematicians,
  Springer, New York, 1977.
  A very pure mathematical treatment of general relativity.
  Requires a strong background in differential geometry.
  (Historical footnote: Sachs was my major professor.)
• Richard L. Bishop & Samuel I. Goldberg, Tensor Analysis on Manifolds,
  Macmillan, New York, 1968; Dover, New York, 1980.
  A good reference for tensors.

Other Books:

A description of some books on differential forms and differential geometry can be found here.
A number of books on special relativity are also available (but not on reserve) in the library.