Physics and mathematics students are as eager as ever to become acquainted withthefoundationsofgeneralrelativityandsomeofitsmajorapplicationsin astrophysics and cosmology. I hope that this textbook gives a comprehensive and timelyintroduction toboth aspectsof thisfascinating?eld, and willturn out to be useful for undergraduate and graduate students. This book is a complete revision and extension of my previous volume GeneralRelativityandRelativisticAstrophysics thatappearedabouttwenty years ago in the Springer Series Texts and Monographs in Physics; however, it cannot be regarded just as a...