Special relativity - a first encounter

The author claims that he has tried to use a minimum of mathematics in this book. However, there are certainly introductions to special relativity which use less mathematics, and I would say that this book was more suited to someone who has read such introductions but wants to get a firmer grasp on the subject, but without ploughing through a large textbook on the subject. Giulini packs a lot of information into a compact book without it feeling rushed and makes good use of diagrams. The mathematics is aimed at a 'well educated 16 year old', and so the book should have a wide audience.

As well as deriving the equations of special relativity, Guilini shows how they relate to the rest of physics, for example how Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism become invariant under changes of frame. There is also a chapter showing the derivation of that most famous of equations E=mc². The final chapter includes the current status of several experimental tests of relativity.

Although the book is subtitled '100 years since Einstein' and has come out at the same time as many other books about him, it is different in that it isn't meant to be biographical - its subject is special relativity rather than Einstein.