Rating: 
Summary: If you love physics you'll love this book! If not--CAUTION!
Review: I loved "The Elegant Universe"! I even purchased the PBS-TV Nova special with Brian Greene on DVD. Now, I will admit that I am a physics nut(physics has ALWAYS been one of my favorite subjects), so with that in mind, I thought this was a great read. Will others who are not as "nutty" about physics love it?? Frankly, I would not recommend this book to you if you are not interested in physics. Why?? You may become so bored that you won't get through it. I love Brian Greene as a writer because he does a great job explaining physics in terms that people can understand, BUT it's still physics and you need to have at least some interest in the subject.Dr. Michael L. Johnson author of "What Do You Do When the Medications Don't Work--A Non-Drug Treatment of Dizziness, Migraine Headaches, Fibromyalgia, and Other Chronic Conditions".
Rating:
Summary: Better than Elegant
Review: Actually, I am not in a position to say that, since I was not able to read beyond 40 pages of the Elegant Universe. "Fabric's" organization is more useful to me, a science literate layperson. I am very excited by the concepts presented so clearly in Fabric, particularly entanglement and time symmetry. Beautiful stuff. I would also recommend Timothy Ferris' the Whole Shebang as a useful companion to this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good book about pretty old science
Review: There is some overlapping between The Fabric of the Cosmos and Brian Greene's previous book The Elegant Universe. The foundations of relativity and quantum theory were laid well before the appearance of spacecraft explorations, computers and the chaos theory. It is very unlikely that we can understand the texture of reality by adding extra dimensions to the old framework. For a much fresher look on the fabric of reality that elucidates puzzling observations, like normal galaxies and heavy elements at the fringes of the accessible universe, I recommend to pop-science and sci-fi readers Eugene Savov's book Theory of Interaction the Simplest Explanation of Everything. This book shows how the discovered 3D-spiral structure of nature unfolds and creates what we see as space, time, cosmic bodies, atoms, elementary particles, etc. Savov simply demonstrates how the revealed vibrating underlying structure creates what we observe and then described in the laws of modern physics. If you are willing to explore entertaining ideas that because of their complexity are unlikely to persist for more than few decades then buy Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. If you are looking for the fabric of existence inferred from space observations and trained in fractals intuition, then buy Eugene Savov's Theory of Interaction the Simplest Explanation of Everything together with Discovery of Cosmic Fractals by Yurij Baryshev and Pekka Teerikorpi. In the best case add these three books to your collection of basic books. Look for controversial books to free your mind.
Rating:
Summary: A chat about space that covers a lot of territory
Review: (4 and a half stars)
I had a lopsided education, flush with math but with no exposure to physics. The way I judge a pop physics book is: are things described in enough detail that I can sense the shape of the math behind it? By that criterion, the two finest works in the genre over the last decade have been Guth's "Inflation", and Greene's "The Elegant Universe". So, a newly minted book by Greene was too enticing to pass up, even though a glance at the table of contents showed there would be a lot of overlap with his first book. His gift for vivid and visual explanation is as strong as ever. The depth of detail that charmed me before is mostly missing this time around. Partly that's because he's aiming at a somewhat less sophisticated reader; and partly it's because he's cast a much wider net. Rather than providing a tutorial on string theory, with other topics brought in only as necessary to that end, he is recounting the history in physics of the notions of space and time. (To anyone interested in pursuing the earlier parts of that history in greater depth, let me recommend Max Jammer's classic "Concepts of Space".) Some repetition is unavoidable, since Greene can't assume the reader has already gone through "The Elegant Universe". Even so, he manages a fresh take on most of the duplicated material. In this treatment, for instance, Newtonian space, special and general relativity are all introduced through the unusual lens of Mach's principle. But a good deal is new. A much compressed treatment of string theory, and short shrift allotted to particle physics and black holes, lets Greene expand considerably on quantum theory, the nature of entanglement, the origins of the arrow of time, and the several incarnations of cosmological inflation theory. In particular, he describes the competing current interpretations of the "collapse of the wave packet", in just four pages, which is as clear, as accurate, and as scrupulously fair to the proponents of each, as any forty page discussion you're likely to find elsewhere. The marvels of twentieth century physics have become too extensive to be captured, even superficially, in any one volume. But if someone unfamiliar with those marvels wanted to get some sort of handle on them with just one book, this one would be in strong contention to be that book. It's lively, breezy, but also mind-stretching and precise. Those who have already read several such volumes, though, and want to dive a little further below the surface, will be better served by Greene's first work. No harm in reading both, though. I just did, and had a fine old time. This is the gentler of the two, and the better place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Clear--A Gem
Review: This book a radiant gem. It provides an uncompromsing tour through modern physics. It is the best science book I've ever read. Personally, I even liked it a bit more than Elegant Universe because the material strives deeper into the foundations of accepted physics, rather than heading straight for theories that are so far without experimental verification. There is some superficial overlap with Elegant Universe (both books need to lay the foundation of relativity and the quantum) but very different concerns are central to the discussion in this book. Everything Greene discusses here is geared toward shining as bright a light on space and time as one can. Unification (the topic of The Elegant Universe) comes into the late chapters, but not as an end into and of itself, instead, as part of the newest views on space and time. If you are ready to examine the reality you experience and have your preconceptions challenged, you are ready for the adventure this book brings.
Rating:
Summary: Surprise
Review: I was surprised to find a few negative reviews for this book. There are many deeply sophisticated ideas offered up here and I appreciate Greene taking the time away from his research to offer help for the rest of us who would like to catch a glimpse of his view of the cosmos. The detailed notes at the end of the book are nearly a second book in themselves and despite having read many other books on these topics there was much freshness in Greenes approach as well as some new angles I had not encountered before. It would take a severely jaded person to fail to appreciate the wealth of material presented here. However the reader must be prepared to think carefully and bring some serious mental exertion to the table. Understanding the cosmos does not come free or easy; the effort is certainly worth it. I was impressed that the author really did draw distinctions between what is solidly known vs where the contemporary uncertainties lie. Study the footnotes at the end of the book - carefully!
Rating:
Summary: For all cutting edge science buffs:
Review: ..the new Brian Greene's book is definitely not a "re-write" of "The Elegant Universe".
It is a monumental update, and continuation.
For example: section Notes (p.495 - 536, very interesting itself) quite often encourages reader to expand and check back for more details in "The Elegant Universe".
"The Fabric of the Cosmos" will refresh the knowledge, one managed to obtain after reading John Barrow (on properties of the void), Alan Guth (on inflationary theory), Michio Kaku and Kip Thorne (on space-time), Lawrence Krau (on dark energy), Victor Stenger, Lee Smolin (on quantum gravity), Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking (on general cosmology)- everything is there, in one volume.
Rating:
Summary: A Golden Book
Review: A deep, incisive look at the universe according to modern physics. The material is mind stretching, the ideas tough to grasp, but the journey this book takes you on is worth the effort. Hugely worth the effort. With this author's masterful handholding, his constant attention to making the material as accessible as it possibly can be, you can go far from conventional ideas of how the universe works. Where was Mr. Greene when I was a student?? This is how science should be taught. With artful analogies and great little stories, you learn so much from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: As vacuous as the TV show, but a lot longer
Review: This book begins with endless long-winded explanations
of modern physics based on analogies that don't explain much
but do involve characters from the Simpsons. The later chapters
on string theory are even more breathlessly gee-whiz and
content-free than the author's TV show, but do go on and on.
The author makes no attempt to distinguish between things for which there is scientific evidence and things which he thinks sound cool. He's clearly much more interested in the latter than the former.
Rating:
Summary: terrific book
Review: He takes difficult concepts and makes them understandable.I not only enjoyed this book,I learned a lot.In fact,I could not put it down and I plan to reread it. Good Job.
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