Does the world really need a new textbook on general relativity? I feel that my first duty in presenting this book should be to provide a convincing affirmative answer to this question.

There already exists a vast array of available books. I will not attempt here to make an exhaustive list, but I will mention three of my favourites. For its unsurpassed pedagogical presentation of the elementary aspects of general relativity, I like Schutz's A first course in general relativity. For its unsurpassed completeness, I like Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. And for its unsurpassed elegance and rigour, I like Wald's General Relativity. In my view, a serious student could do no better than start with Schutz for an outstanding introductory course, then move on to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler to get a broad coverage of many different topics and techniques, and then finish off with Wald to gain access to the more modern topics and the mathematical standard that Wald has since imposed on this field. This is a long route, but with this book I hope to help the student along. I see my place as being somewhere between Schutz and Wald – more advanced than Schutz but less sophisticated than Wald – and I cover some of the few topics that are not handled by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.

In the winter of 1998 I was given the responsibility of creating an advanced course in general relativity. The course was intended for graduate students working in the Gravitation Group of the Guelph-Waterloo Physics Institute, a joint graduate programme in Physics shared by the Universities of Guelph and Waterloo.