Textbook by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler. Written in 1972, this tome is black with a diagram of an apple being examined under a magnifying glass on the front cover. It is 1279 pages of unrelenting formalisim. I have dipped in and out of this test but have yet to cast myself afloat in it's waters. This book is almost singlehandedly responsible for the resurgance seen in research in gravity in the last quater century.
The table of contentes for the last chaper of the book are:
44. Beyond the End of Time 1196
  1. Gravitational Collapse as the Greatest Crisis in Physics of All Time 1196
  2. Assessment of the Theory that Predicts Collapse 1198
  3. Vaccum Fluctuations: Their Prevalence and Final Dominance 1202
  4. Not Geometry, but Pregeometry, as the Magic Building Material 1203
  5. Pregeometry as the Calculus of Propositions 1208
  6. The Black Box: The Reprocessing of the Universe 1209