I guess I'm on a Brian Cox kick, and this time, it's his 2009 book, Why does E=MC^2? I really enjoy the way he finds different ways of explaining similar things. This time, he explains relativity, but without recourse to any Penrose diagrams. He basically starts with 2 assumptions, one driven by experiment, which is the speed of light is measured to be the same no matter where you are, how fast you're going. The second is that causality applies, in other words no way can you ever see the effect prior to the cause.
From there, he uses the Pythagoras theorem, but applied to 4-dimensional space-time, and derives the basic equation. It's an impressive tour de force, and explained clearly and relatively cleanly, even down to the use of complex numbers. He then goes on to explore what mass is, then introduces the standard model of quantum mechanics, and proceeds to describe various relativistic effects.
This book was written before the conclusive discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN, but was clearly very confident about the outcome of the LHC experiments. I thought it was quite a lot of fun to read. Maybe I should start watching his TV shows as well.
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