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The absolute best way to study anything is by reading books. True deep knowledge comes from books and it’s always been this way for pretty much any topics, including relativity.

On this page, I’ll give you my recommendations on what has personally helped me when self-studying both special and general relativity, but of course feel free to check out other resources as well.

My Top 3 Book Recommendations For Special Relativity

Why I Picked These 3 Books & Who They Are Best Suited For

Theoretical Minimum: Special Relativity & Classical Field Theory by Leonard Susskind (My #1 Recommendation Overall)

Leonard Susskind’s Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: Theoretical Minimum is my #1 recommendation for anyone beginning to study special relativity. This is also the first book I personally read on special relativity.

For those just beginning to learn special relativity, this is a wonderfully comprehensive introduction with lots of deep insights along the way.

This book is part of the Theoretical Minimum book series, which is meant to basically give you all the tools you need to understand advanced modern physics and to get to topics such as general relativity and QFT (including mathematical concepts).

Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory is the third and newest part of Susskind’s Theoretical Minimum book series.

This particular edition covers special relativity and field theory (basically electromagnetism in a relativistic context).

The book goes quite deep into many topics in special relativity and electromagnetism, which I really enjoyed about it. It’s not just a surface-level introduction.

Leonard Susskind also covers some of the basic ideas that will come up in general relativity, such as energy and momentum densities and the momentum-energy tensor, which I thought was useful. There are also some practice exercises laid out throughout the chapters.

The book also goes great paired with Susskind’s free Youtube lectures, which act as sort of like summaries of the topics covered in the book. To be fair, I personally think the book is much more easy to follow than the video lectures.

The Einstein Theory of Relativity by Lillian Lieber (Best Book For Absolute Beginners/For Intuitive Understanding)

Another book that’s worth checking out is Lillian R. Lieber’s The Einstein Theory of Relativity.

I’ve actually heard a LOT of people say good things about this book and recommending it as the best introduction to both special and general relativity.

I would personally agree with this in many ways. The book is a wonderful introduction in terms of conceptual reading and developing some intuition for many of the topics in special and general relativity.

I’d say this book is best for someone who is looking more for an intuitive and clear approach. Susskind’s book gives more of a deep and comprehensive explanation of things while Lieber’s book gives more of a conceptual and simplistic approach.

Now, this book also explores many of the more “philosophic” consequences underlying special relativity. Here’s an example of the writing style, which I highly enjoyed:

The chapters are fairly short, straight to the point and easy to follow and many of the ideas are explained through pictures and diagrams, which is quite useful.

The book also covers lots of topics in general relativity and the best part is that you can probably grasp all the topics with just a high-school level of mathematics, since all of the mathematics are also explained.

Spacetime Physics by Taylor & Wheeler (Best For Practical Understanding & Practice Problems)

My Top 3 Book Recommendations For General Relativity

Why I Picked These 3 Books & Who They Are Best Suited For