This is a book review of Modern Special Relativity by Johann Rafelski.
My first impression was that this book goes beyond standard books on Special Relativity (SR) by including more historical context and clearing up some confusion which exists among some readers (though not among experts) regarding various misunderstandings concerning special relativity. There is some historical background, but it is used to add to the confusion rather than clear it up. Rafelski is apparently reasonably well known in the heavy-ion community and the book is from what should be a serious publisher, so I was surprised at the extent to which a non-standard exposition of SR is offered to the reader, espcecially in a book aimed at students. A few examples: Rafelski claims that length contraction is something which actually physically happens, rather than being an apparent effect. He claims that acceleration cannot be handled within SR. Despite his unorthodox views, most or all things actually calculated have the same result as in mainstream expositions. At the same time, at least in this case, I think that there is a right and wrong interpretation, even if the results are the same. He does, though, indicate some cases in which he claims that his physical effects could actually be measured. It appears that Rafelski believes in the existence of the æther, though conceding that one could never detect it, even in principle. Particularly bizarre is his claim that SR is related to electromagnetic radiation via the speed of light (and not just some maximum speed), leading him to speculate that dark matter might not be subject to relativistic effects! (At least he doesn't call the Lorenz gauge the Lorentz gauge.) The book is thus very confusing to read, which is not helped by the fact that Rafelski is obviously not a native speaker of English and apparently there has been no editing to correct for that. The book has many explanations, useful diagrams, and many worked examples, also involving real-world applications. All the usual topics, and then some, are here, but anyone who could actually learn something from the book would have trouble distinguishing the unorthodox elements from others, even though Rafelski often points out where he thinks that he is wrong and others are right.