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Black holes, predicted by Albert Einstein´s general theory of relativity more than a century ago, have long intrigued scientists and the public with their bizarre and fantastical properties. Although Einstein understood that black holes were mathematical solutions to his equations, he never accepted their physical reality - a viewpoint many shared. This all changed in the 1960s and 1970s, when a deeper conceptual understanding of black holes developed just as new observations revealed the existence of quasars and X-ray binary star systems, whose mysterious properties could be explained by the presence of black holes. Black holes have since been the subject of intense research - and the physics governing how they behave and affect their surroundings is stranger and more mind-bending than any fiction. The Little Book of Black Holes takes readers deep into the mysterious heart of the subject, offering rare clarity of insight into the physics that makes black holes simple yet destructive manifestations of geometric destiny.

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"The Little Book of Black Holes by Gubser and Pretorius provides an elegantly brief introduction to the basic properties of black holes and their occurrence in the universe. I warmly recommend it to the general reader."--Roger Penrose, author of Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe

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Steven S. Gubser is professor of physics at Princeton University and the author of The Little Book of String Theory (Princeton). Frans Pretorius is professor of physics at Princeton. They both live in Princeton, New Jersey

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