The lighter side of gravity

In this book, Narlikar describes our understanding of gravity and its implications for the behaviour of the universe we live in. The reader is introduced to Newton's laws of motion and gravity and see how they were superceded by Einstein's theories of relativity. The implications of the general theory of relativity such as black holes are then investigated. Narlikar makes good use of diagrams, and has plenty of astronomical photographs, thus linking the book to observational results, rather than it being too abstract. If you want more than the 'pop' descriptions of cosmology and gravitation, but don't want to get into mathematics, then this book should suit you.

As for 'The lighter side', well don't expect the book to be full of witty anecdotes - where it does depart from standard exposition I would call it quirky rather than amusing. For instance the last chapter looks to see whether the Steady-State theory can be salvaged. Also, although the book has been brought up to date with discussion of COBE results and the like, it does seem a bit old-fashioned - for instance there is no mention of Hawking radiation. On the other hand Narlikar does include some more general astrophysics, such as the workings of stars, which is important for getting a more solid grounding in the subject of cosmology.