# Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Classic general relativity textbook, often cited as one of the two great GR texts and useful for differential forms. Some say it shows its age.

## Why people recommend it

- Standard general relativity textbook (3 comments): "both classic GR textbooks, Misner, Thorne & Wheeler (1973) and Wald (1984) discuss Kruskal coordinates" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49441944)) "pretty standard GR textbook and it is often cited as a useful text on differential forms for math" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48618787)) "the two great classic GR textbooks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439264))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Feynman, Leighton and Sands](https://hackerapproved.com/p/feynman-lectures-on-physics.md): 34 recommend
- [Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/course-of-theoretical-physics.md): 8 recommend
- [Computational Physics (2nd Edition) by Giordano and Nakanishi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/computational-physics.md): 7 recommend
- [General Relativity by Robert Wald](https://hackerapproved.com/p/general-relativity.md): 6 recommend
- [Engineering Thermodynamics](https://hackerapproved.com/p/free-textbook-on-engineering-thermodynamics.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691177791?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9780691177793) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gravitation/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).