As with A Brief History of Time, I was frequently caught off guard by Hawking's sense of humor. His witty comments brighten up what could have been rather dry material. This is another I listened to on audiobook, read by Simon Prebble. The narrator was good and the subject matter interesting, but I think this would be better read in paper form, if only for the added benefit of diagrams. I had a lot of trouble following some of the more mind-bending notions in theoretical physics. ( )

I do enjoy reading Stephen Hawking, he is a good writer and has a way with words. But I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I enjoyed [book:A Briefer History of Time|2094] more so than this book. There were just more parts of this book that I found more confusing, and even the illustrations didn't always help. There are a lot of illustrations included, which generally do help quite a bit in trying to understand the concepts discussed. ( )

astrofisica, fisica

This book gets too much out of reality. Nice pictures. Nothing new, and by that I mean all of the Physics is now about one topic(Boring). ( )

I never got more than about thirty pages into this book. School got in the way of me reading it and learning something interesting--SUR-FUCKING-PRISE.

If you want to read this book, drop out of school first. Trust me, it's be worth it (it'll make your dong 46% bigger).

This audiobook wasn’t as good as A Briefer History of Time, because I preferred the reader of the latter (Eric Davies has a wonderful voice, and Simon Prebble is a Brit), and because this audiobook did not even have the “enhancement” of a PDF of pictures from the book that you can view on your computer as the latter did. As I stated in my review of "Briefer History...", even that “enhancement” isn’t particularly useful, since you can’t look at the pictures on the CD while listening to the book in your car, and because I felt videos rather than static illustrations to depict the principles would be more useful.

Hawking seems to cover the same topics as are covered in the other book, just in a different order. It did seem as though the material was clearer this time, but whether that was due to the organization of the book or to the fact that maybe some of the information is finally sinking in on a second listen, I’m not sure. There are a few concepts I think I really understand now (for example, the Doppler effect, although that could have been demonstrated very effectively with an audio/video clip of a passing train). Once again, I had to check out the book to clarify some concepts with the illustrations.

On the plus side, Hawking is humorous and drolly dry at times, especially with his references to Star Trek (and his appearances playing poker with Data, Einstein, and Newton on "The Next Generation") and quotes from Shakespeare. However, I think two trials of Hawking in audiobook are plenty, and I won’t be buying or listening to any more. ( )

I read Stephen Hawking's previous book, A Brief History of Time when I was about 16 years old. That book was great and pretty easy to understand even though I didn't know much about physics back then.

Now, ten years later, having spent five of those years studying physics at university level, I can't find much enjoyment in this book. Admittedly, it could be a question of my taste changing while growing up - but I still enjoy A Brief History of Time.

Although there were many new tidbits for me (I'm by no means an astrophysicist) and I enjoyed reading the book, the sense of wonder was not there. The "plot" of the book was hard to follow since the book wasn't as well structured as ABHoT. Also, I have a feeling that if I had read this book back when I was 16, I might not have understood very much of it, so I'm not sure that this book is as suitable to someone who has never studied physics.

All in all, a good book if you enjoy physics without the equations every once in a while, but not something I would recommend as a must read for a beginner. ( )

With humor and pretty pictures, Stephen Hawking describes the current theories about the universe as we know it. Definitely more approachable if you have some mathematics or physics background, but appreciable by a layperson as well. ( )

The quest for a quantum gravity theory, etc. Lots of color illustrations.

http://www.neilfein.com/2006/06/brief... ( )

http://coyotemercury.com/blog1/2006/0... ( )

FUNNY INTERESTING AND TOTALLY ABSORBING I DONT AGREE WITH ALL HE HE SAYS BUT THEN I AM A CHRISTIAN HE IS NOT ( )