Review of Gravity's Century: From Einstein's Eclipses to Images of Black Holes by Ron Cowen

Phillip Helbig

The Observatory, 140, 1275, 64–65 (April 2020)


This is a book review of Gravity's Century by Ron Cowen. The book covers the origin of GR, early tests of the theory, cosmology, black holes in general, quantum gravity, gravitational waves, and the recent imaging of black holes. The book is well written in the sense that it is easy and enjoyable to read as far as the style goes, but unfortunately has several factual errors. Having said that, there are fewer goofs in the second half of the book, which deals with more-modern topics. There are many illustrious people mentioned in the acknowledgements. I'm sure that they all provided something of value, but the book could have benefitted more from suggestions from one person with a reasonable knowledge of the field. As mentioned above, in general it is well written; it also strikes the right balance in compressing a century of the history of GR into a small book and is written at an appropriate level.


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