Frank Wilczek is a professor of Physics at MIT and has been awarded a Nobel Prize in the field of Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD), This places him at the cutting edge of modern theoretical physics. Nevertheless this book can be read and appreciated by anyone with a background in the physical sciences. The style is completely casual and conversational. It is as if Professor Wilczek invited the reader into his home and then said something like 'now you can sit over there on the sofa and I'll sit here in this easy chair and I'll tell you how it really is'. Then the book follows.

The author invites the reader to share with him a new view of matter and a new view of reality. An anchor point in these novel views is the successful completion of a calculation which shows that at least 95% of what was previously thought of as matter (material substance) is really energy in the form of excitations (oscillations, vibrations) of the fields which make up the basic fabric of the universe. This dynamic concept is reminiscent of the ideas presented by Alfred North Whitehead in his book "Process and Reality".

The typical reader will be most interested in those parts of the book which deal with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is now being tuned up at CERN in Europe. Wilczek lays his reputation on the line by invoking a novel concept of cosmic superconductivity, supersymmetry and QCD to predict some of the properties of here-to-fore unseen particles which may be produced by the LHC. It will certainly be very interesting to see how this thread plays out.

An aspect of this book may have "unintended consequences". For each type of fundamental particle there is a unique field extending throughout the entire universe, the excitations of which give rise to copies of that particle. For example all electrons are excitations of the one unique 'electron field'. The collection of all of these fields, one for each type of fundamental particle and a few more, is called The Grid. Thus all matter, including the matter in our own bodies, has a common origin in excitations of The Grid. This common origin suggests 'the democratic theory of reality' as a name for this concept.

An alternate theory states that reality consists of little 'micro-billard' balls that have no common origin and hence no method of interaction except by collision. This theory has been called 'reductionism', for example, by Stuart Kauffmann in his book "Reinventing the Sacred". I think a better name would be 'the aristocratic theory of reality' since it provides a philosophical basis for claims that some people are inherently superior to others through their superior origin and hence are not necessarily subject to the same moral code as their inferior counter parts of a distinctly different inferior origin. The social implications of this view have been discussed by David Bohm in the first chapter his book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order".

The science presented in Wilczek's book has been confirmed by many experiments and reviewed by many nationally respected authorities. It is an impeccable and irrefutable scientific presentation. However the possible religious, social and political implications of the result mentioned above, may cause some persons to evaluate this book irrationally and illogically, either excessively laudatory or excessively critical. I have not seen any reactions of this type, but if the reader does encounter some, I hope the reader well recognize their source and origin and proceed to evaluate the book rationally and intelligently according to their own criteria.

The only problem I have with this book is that there are no mathematical equations or formulae to specifically spell out the exact meaning of the verbal descriptions of the new ideas. Wilczek says the publisher 'advised' him to leave them all out. ( )

Recapitulating his unique take on quantum chromodynamics and related matters, Nobel-winner Wilczek here makes a stab at truly popular-level writing. But his deep expertise pokes through in many places and in many ways. Some advances that he thinks might not be far off: discovery of Higgs and supersymmetry particles, detection of proton decay, identification of dark matter. www.itsfrombits.com

Empty space is not really empty, we may be living inside of some cosmic superconductor...some extremely mind-blowing things inside of this book. It will definitely require more than one reading for me to grasp all of what is being said. At the end of the day I look at the world a little differently because of this book, and that tells me that reading it was definitely worth while. ( )