Gravitation is a widely adopted textbook on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, written by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler.

The cover illustration, drawn by Kenneth Gwin, is a line drawing of an apple with cuts in the skin to show the geodesics on its surface.

While this may not be considered the best introductory text because its coverage may overwhelm a newcomer, and even though parts of it are now out of date, it has remained a highly valued reference for advanced graduate students and researchers as of 1998.

The main text is supplemented by boxes containing extra information, which can be omitted without loss of continuity.

The mathematics, primarily tensor calculus and differential forms in curved spacetime, is developed as required.

There are numerous illustrations of advanced mathematical ideas such as alternating multilinear forms, parallel transport, and the orientation of the hypercube in spacetime.

The prose in the book is conversational; the authors use plain language and analogies to everyday objects.

The original citation is It has also been translated into other languages, including Russian (in three volumes), Chinese,[2] and Japanese.

In addition to the four given, other modern references include George Efstathiou et al.,[9] Bernard F. Schutz,[10] James Foster et al.,[11] Robert Wald,[12] and Stephen Hawking et al.[13] Other prominent physics books also cite it.

For example, Classical Mechanics (second edition) by Herbert Goldstein, who comments:[14] This massive treatise (1279 pages!

The pedagogic apparatus includes separately marked tracks, boxes of various kinds, marginal comments, and cleverly designed diagrams.The third edition of Goldstein's text still lists Gravitation as an "excellent" resource on field theory in its selected biography.