Title: A good introduction
Product review: I have not had a chance to work through the whole book yet, but I think the previous reviewer is correct - it is an excellent book. I particularly like the approach in the early chapters where special relativity is treated with the basic linear algebra of linear transformations. This gives several interesting applications that students often don't see early in their mathematical career.The later chapters cover the geometry of surfaces and general relativity. I would like to learn GR in a "coordinate-free" fashion, but Callahan does not take that approach (and gives his reasons clearly in the introduction). In scanning over the later chapters it looks like the coordinate approach is balanced with lots of physical and geometric explanation.
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