--- In rtrfans@yahoogroups.com, "herbmartin52" <herbmartin@...> wrote:

>
> I wonder if anyone has read and can comment on these:
>
> "A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics", 2nd edition (Paperback)
> by Ian D. Lawrie
>
I've had this book on my shelf for years.
Tried again and again to make heads-or-tails of most of it.
Felt pretty lost until RTR cam around.
I'm now finding it pretty easy to "get",
and think it is a pretty good "short summart reference",
if you have enough basics to use it.

..which I did not until penrose kindly provided them.

I recently read "The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model,
the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0132366789/ref=wl_it_dp/102-3913079-2999335?%5F\
encoding=UTF8&colid=1YY099M20CDSZ&coliid=I21TXHZZ90GL4V&v=glance&n=283155
(sorry about the amazon add - but it's really the best way to find it)

which I thought was going to be useless, it kind of dragged on in the
beginning without getting into any real meat. (talked about what it
was going to talk about, etc...), but about half way through it got
pretty good. Particularly the info about Schwinger and his version of
QFT. And of course the role symmetry groups play, SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1),
the "recipe" for creating a QFT given a lagrangian, and the lagrangian
for the standard model


> "An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology" by Jerzy
> Plebanski, Andrzej Krasinski
>
> --
> Herb
>