"Steven Balbus brings new life to this beautiful subject. A must-have for any physicist interested in gravity." --Chris Reynolds, University of Maryland "This is a beautiful and useful introduction to Einstein's theory of gravity and its applications, especially for those working at the intersection of relativity and astrophysics. It gathers together and connects the dots for key applications that are often left out of other treatments. And best of all, it provides historical context, telling the story of gravity with Balbusian brio!" --Charles F. Gammie, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "Steven Balbus is renowned for bringing fresh insights and penetrating analysis to every problem he tackles. This book is no exception." --James Stone, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton "Balbus's textbook is likely to become a classic.

It's concise, deep, modern, and accessible, and covers many topics not normally found in introductory texts." --Scott Tremaine, author of Dynamics of Planetary Systems and coauthor of Galactic Dynamics "Balbus has done a remarkable job of presenting general relativity in a coherent fashion while highlighting its importance in the context of theoretical physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. The topics are very well chosen, the derivations are detailed and easy to follow, and the problems are thought-provoking without being too challenging." --Emanuele Berti, Johns Hopkins University "Written by an award-winning astrophysicist, An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology includes some more recent and very interesting topics, such as the detection of background gravitational waves using pulsar timing array, and it is relatively short, so one could cover most of the material in a one-semester course." --Cosmin Ilie, Colgate University " An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology is comprehensive, carefully written, and authoritative. I would personally use it as a reference or supplementary text." --Jeremy Darling, University of Colorado Boulder.