Originally published in 1979 to honour Einstein's hundredth birthday, this collaboration of twenty-one of the world's leading relativists consisted of a carefully integrated survey of the state of research. A unique book and a standard for many years, it is indispensable to anyone concerned with Einstein's profound influence.

List of contributors; Preface; 1. An introductory survey S. W. Hawking and W. Israel; 2. The confrontation between gravitation theory and experiment C. M. Will; 3. Gravitational-radiation experiments D. H. Douglass and V. B. Braginsky; 4. The initial value problem and the dynamical formulation of general relativity A. E. Fischer and J. E. Marsden; 5. Global structure of spacetimes R. Geroch and G. T. Horowitz; 6. The general theory of the mechanical, electromagnetic and thermodynamic properties of black holes B. Carter; 7. An introduction to the theory of the Kerr metric and its peturbations S. Chandrasekhar; 8. Black hole astrophysics R. D. Blandford and K. S. Thorne; 9. The big bang cosmology - enigmas and nostrums R. H. Dicke and P. J. E. Peebles; 10. Cosmology and the early universe Ya B. Zel'dovitch; 11. Anisotropic and inhomogeneous relativistic cosmologies M. A. H. MacCallum; 12. Singularities and time-asymmetry R. Penrose; 13. Quantum field theory in curved spacetime G. W. Gibbons; 14. Quantum gravity: the new synthesis B. S. DeWitt; 15. The path-integral approach to quantum gravity S. W. Hawking; 16. Ultraviolet divergences in quantum theories of gravitation S. Weinberg; References; Index.