Having read books by both Brian Greene and Michio Kaku promoting string and M-theory , I thought I should pick up a serious criticism of those concepts. Woit is a collegue of Greene but is anti-string theory. He argues persuasively that string theory is fatally flawed due to a lack of any predictions and a propensity to fall back on anthropic arguments or multiple universes (or just invent a new variable) to explain experimental data not predicted by the theory.

The book itself is dense by popular science standards. Given that Woit's book appears to be a direct answer to those put out by Greene, Kaku, and others, he would have done well to incorporate metaphor and modelling to help his arguments convey to the reader. Even as someone who enjoys dense math books, this one's hundred-page foray into complex mathematics was tough to slog through. In the end, his direct arguments against string theory barely referred back to the symmetry discussions. String theory itself was not even mentioned until the latter half of the book, making the grind through symmetries a bit frustrating and dry.

The early history of particle physics experimentation is excellent, and the end of the book has much greater readability to the average reader. Woit has strong arguments about why string theory emerged (lack of other options, some nifty math tricks) as well as why it maintains dominance after decades of what Woit describes as a 'failure' to produce any proof of being on the right track (grandfathered tenured professors, decreasing funding for new hires, etc).

All in all, despite its flaws, the book establishes a clear line of attack against string theory for the reader, but does suffer severely from a long section of advanced math which is not very well demonstrated to the average reader. Woit's general bitter tone is a bit off-putting and won't be well received by those who like the lighter, cheerier moods of Brian Greene and Michio Kaku. I look forward to reading entries on Woit's blog by the same name, as well as Lee Smolin's books 'The Trouble with Physics' and 'Three Roads to Quantum Gravity' for more of this (for now) minority view of string theory. Three stars. ( )

The subtext of this book closely describes only the last third of it, so I consider it's rather misleading. It's not mainly about the failure of string theory, more history of the development of particle physics. Also I don't feel that the author has much of a gift of explaining difficult concepts to mathematical duffers like myself. Lacks cohesion as a complete book, reads more as a series of essays, also a tad too self-conscious. The last third is the most interesting and could I think have been expanded to the whole of a shorter book with the first 13 or so chapters compressed to a consise summary, along with some biographical details of major contributors (e.g. Ed Witten). I was already convinced that String Theory's a huge egotism, so can't really comment on how persuasive Woit's arguments are ;-) ( )

Demolishes the hype about string theory and on the way gives one of the most lucid, non-mathematical descriptions of modern field theory, I've seen. May be a bit of a tough read for the non-serious science reader, but I found it very clear and enlightening. ( )

One of two widely noted '06 books that have caused a ruckus in the ranks of string theorists. (The other is Lee Smolin's _The Trouble with Physics_.) Some chapters are about the relation between advanced math and theoretical particle physics, and are pretty hard going even though there are no equations. Good related blog at www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress

An excellent overview and criticism of the current state of particle physics and string theories, but be warned; while written to be popularly accessible, this book still covers significantly challenging discussion of mathematics, which may dismay a general reader. ( )