Rating: 
Summary: Interesting.
Review: A Brief History of Time is about Stephen Hawking explaining to the layman developments in astrophysics in the last 2,000 years or so up until modern day approaches to this topic. To be honest it is not that hard to understand (it is written somewhat for the layman) and Hawkings does make his own beliefs known in the final few chapters. Stephen Hawking is ONE of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, but not the most brilliant theorectical physicist in history, but he is actually not a bad writer too so that is why you have heard more about him than all the others, but if you look around you will find plenty of other writers who have different postulations however they all seem to going to the right direction. Hawkings was one of the first theorectical physicist to actually start a new direction in the 1980s with his papers on theorectical physics so you might as well listen to what he has to say. Basically this is astrophysics made somewhat easy but even those more mathmatically minded will find lots of useful data to mull through. The accessibility of high-end astrophysics is right here in these pages. Hawkings understood that the layman wanted to know what the hell these guys where thinking and so he wrote a book to do just that and here is it. It is a lot harder looking that what it actually is. High-school students can follow it no problem.
Rating: 
Summary: Interseristing Ideas...flawed conclusions
Review: This is an interesting book, and if you like Physics it does present many fascinating ideas for you to ponder, like time travel, evaporating black holes, and the expansion of the universe. My problem is that it doesn't lead anywhere, and the authors grandiose statements really contradict what his own data suggests.....others, avowed atheists like Carl Sagan have gotten ahold of this work and tried to twist it into proving that God does not exist, however; even the author reflects that these theories actually confirm the existence of a creator. It seems his brilliant mind cannot make the final leap that his theories suggest.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time - 4 / 5
Review: Stephen Hawking knows what he is talking about. I am absolutely amazed that other reviewers have had the audacity to question his brilliance. That alone proves their ignorance.
This book's content is wonderful. Hawking quite obviously knows his stuff, but he's a physicist, not a writer. This is apparent in some places. He deals with mind-boggling subjects, and although he tries to explain it at a level the common person could understand, it's not always accomplished. And it's no all his fault; some of the subject matter he discusses is very difficult to grasp.
Overall, the book is filled with enough information to keep most people who aren't phyiscs majors happy, but be forewarned, it is not the easiest read out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing Special
Review: Interested in the universe? If you want to know what happened or in some cases what might have happened, then this book is adequate. However, if you want to know why and how it happened, you will be greatly disappointing. In many cases, no effort is made to explain the why's and how's. In other cases the explanations are poorly written. The truth is Hawking is not a good writer. He is incapable of clearly explaining complex ideas. Like many other pop-science writers he uses poor analogies to avoid explaining abstract ideas. The problem is these analogies do not accurately convey what is really happening. If you really want to understand the how's and why's, I strongly recommend you read Feynman's work. He is truly wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: What? This book sucks
Review: This book is not only poorly written, but fails miserably to explain the very concepts that the reader hopes to understand. Now, this is not due to the 'difficulty' of the matter, but due to the weakness of Hawking's arguments. Perhaps mathematically he is more lucid, but here the 'genius' seems like a dummy. Honestly, can one discount 2-dimensional life on the basis that a dog would fall apart at it's digestive tract? This argument is especially inconsequential and I looked up references to it on the web...and what did I find? People using it as proof of the incompatibility of life and other dimensions. This book is poorly written AND false in parts (the dog diagram among them) but influences the masses. The poor masses! So when I flipped to these reviews to try to find somebody to agree with me, what do I find? The only low ratings come from people that don't understand the material. Don't understand the material! This book was written for 9-year-olds, judging from its content. Hopefully, this is only because serious people didn't read this crap in the first place. Michael Wales
Rating: 
Summary: A Brief History of Time by Hawking
Review: The author ponders some very deep questions in theoretical and
practical physics and the universe. He covers space, time,
the expanding universe, uncertainty, black holes and a unifying
theory of physics and all matter. Einstein first postulated that
matter could neither be created nor destroyed. Ptolemy's model
predicts positioning of heavenly bodies. Galileo proved that
each body increased speed at the same weight despite it's own
weight except for a feather which fell slower due to air
resistance. The author explained that it takes 8 minutes for
light to reach the earth from the sun. In fact, this distance
is an important portal in the quantification and measurement
of time. Without light and distance, the measurement of time
would be difficult and perhaps impossible. The author explained
that the expanding universe slows down and stops.
Chandrasekhar calculated that a cold star would not be able
to support itself against its own gravity. This work is
excellent for science enthusiasts. It would be perfect for a
student class project in science.
Rating:
Summary: Why was this book written?
Review: The ideas discussed in the book are not all that new and notwithstanding the claims by the author I am sure that the book was not written to make physics more appealing or understandable. There are very few lay readers that would pick up a book such as this for the pleasures of science despite its popularity. The most telling reason that the book was written lies at the beginning and the end of the book, namely the introduction by Carl Sagan and the brief biographies of Galileo, Newton and Einstein. The latest edition interestingly leaves out this introduction possibly because it was so telling. In the introduction Sagan, a man not noted for his belief in God, expresses his satisfaction that despite the many times that God is mentioned in the book, the author's inflationary and boundless universe seem for the time being to preclude the existence of a Creator. This was obviously done to reassure the reader that while the author may at times seem to say that the Big Bang Theory is consistent with the Biblical account of the Creation, there is nothing to worry about because his theory offers a way out of this dilemma at the end. And indeed Hawken's theory, although highly speculative and unproven, does offer a way out for those not inclined to accept God as the Creator. As he struggled with his attempts to write God out of the picture, Hawkin's even admits to a mistake in his explanation of a collapsing universe, i.e. that time would reverse or that effect would precede cause. An indication, in my view, of the desperate state of the atheistic view of the universe is the willingness to accept that effect precedes cause rather than admit to the existence of God. The book was, in my view, written for Hawken's fellow scientists and philosophers as a warning that unless the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe is proven wrong then the most basic tenet of the Enlightenment, that God does not exist, is in trouble. There are too many uncomfortable parallels between the Biblical Creation and the Big Bang Theory for the latter to be accepted as science's final word on Creation. So the hunt for dark matter proceeds in earnest as the means by which gravity will eventually lead to the Big Crunch thereby starting the cycle over again. A steady state universe which automatically expands and contracts due to natural laws is much more appealing to those who are uncomfortable with the existence of a Creator. The brief biographies of Galileo, Newton and Einstein with reference to Galileo's near fatal encounter with the Grand Inquisitor is a reminder to the reader of the danger that the existence of God poses to intellectual progress in the view of the author and thereby further reinforces the author's fear that a theory of everything may prove the Church right after all. In the case of Newton and Einstein the biographies are a reminder that the greatest minds in science are non-believers and therefore those with the same view are in good company. Not that the Church is any more of a benevolent ruler over the human psyche than is science, but the existence of God puts a lie to the so-called progressive morality founded on relativism which permeates modern Western Civilization since the Enlightenment. The irony is that relativity in physics should lead to absolutism in morality and this book brings this irony to the fore.
Rating:
Summary: The Joy of Science
Review: The remarkable Stephen Hawking has done it again - another soaring, searching work that is also a textbook to those not familiar with the scientific world and its latest thoughts. In this original work, he traces the "history" of time from both human and cosmic viewpoints. Our psychology and manner of thinking affects our own outlook on the subject as much (or more) than the subject itself. FOr what he states is that time is not a flowing stream but an entity - an actual thing - that ticks in a steady beat. It's almost as if time were the heartbeat of the Universe and we simply dwell in its streams. He also brings in relativity, time travel and other curious notions that we have all thought about but then discarded as too arcane for general discussion. Reading Steven Hawking reminds me of those Isaac Asimov novels where robots, to save manking, disable our motor functions and we simply sit ("With Folded Hands"). But this act somehow jump starts our minds into being able to transmit thoughts; it was aptly titled "And Searching Minds" This is what I feel whenever I think of this man.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating story of cosmology, relativity & quantum mechnx
Review: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was originally published in 1988 and helped thousands of lay-people keep up with the latest ideas about the nature of the universe. This 10th anniversary edition adds the latest advances in science and technology in the last decade and adds a new chapter on the subject of time travel and wormholes. (This is my rehash.) Since the beginning of history, mankind has pondered the origins of the universe. In ancient civilization, humans believed the earth was flat. Aristotle was perhaps one of the first people to postulate that the earth was not flat, but spherical. However, prior to Copernicus, it was believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Now we know that our sun is just one in millions of stars in a vast array of galaxies. It was Edwin Hubble that demonstrated that the universe was expanding. The idea that the universe is expanding means that there must have been a beginning, and a beginning of time. This was the first time that the origin of the universe had become a matter of science. Newton's theory of gravity was always assumed to be accurate, until Einstein came along with the general theory of relativity. Einstein came up with the theory that no mass can travel faster than the speed of light. In his formula, E=mc², the more energy an object has, the more mass it has, and thus the more resistance. The only constant that can be really sure is speed, or rate, while time and distance can be relative. Time, is another dimension of our universe. Because of the distance of the stars and galaxies away from us, we are seeing what happened in the past. Prior to the uncertainty principle, scientists held a very deterministic view of the universe that reflected the modernistic Enlightenment era. The uncertainty principle shows that you cannot predict the future state of a particle. This showed that there is a limit to which science can predict future events based on the laws of physics. As a result of the uncertainty principle, quantum mechanics was formulated to deal with the limitations arising from the uncertainty principle. Rather than trying to define the exact locations of particles, they had a quantum state which factored position and velocity. Democritus, the Greek philosopher who coined the term atom, was perhaps the first philosopher who thought that there was an indivisible element of matter. It was not until the past century that it was discovered that an atom itself had an internal structure. According to quantum mechanics, an atom's particles move in waves because of the nature of its wave/particle duality. The exclusion principle says that a particle cannot exist in the same state or location at the same time. The exclusion principle explains why matter does not collapse into a very high density. Hawkings describes how force-carrying particles can be grouped into four categories based on varying strength: gravitational force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force, and a strong nuclear force. There have been attempts to combine these forces into a grand unified theory. However, grand unified theories do not include the force of gravity, which has been the subject of general relativity. A future quantum theory of gravity would hopefully unite quantum mechanics with general relativity. The affect of gravity on light was not clarified until after the theory of general relativity. It was hypothesized that a star could have such a large gravitational force that light could not escape-that would be a black hole. Black holes are difficult to detect. There currently is evidence for a number of black holes, and even some hints that there are black holes at the center of galaxies. At the big bang, the universe was infinitely small. Hawking notes something interesting in that if the rate of expansion was any slower, then the universe would have recollapsed under its own gravitational forces. Hawking suggests that it is possible that God might have picked the initial configuration of the universe, but that the weak anthropic principle states that we see the universe the way it is because if it was not that way, then we would not be here to see it. The strong anthropic principle says that there may be many different universes (multiverse) or many different regions in the universe so that the odds are that intelligent life may form somewhere. I believe that the universe appears to be so finely tuned for life because it was created that way, not because we happened to have lucky odds. The strong anthropic principle was developed as a way to avoid the idea of an intelligent designer. If there was a Creator, then we can believe that the universe was created this way on purpose. The "inflationary" model of the beginning of the universe has been formulated in order to show that many different initial configurations of the universe could have been possible so that life could be sustained. This means that the universe once expanded at an increasing rate, faster than today. Nevertheless, even if we discover all of the laws of the universe, we still would not know why the universe was here to begin with. As Hawking asks, "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, elegant, concise!
Review: This perhaps the masterpiece of all science books aimed at general readers. I highly recommend everyone reads it at some point of their lives. Stephen hawking is one of the most brilliant scientists of our time, and in this book he demonstrates how he is equally one of the best science writers. At first I was so intimidated by the reputation of Hawking as a leading physicist I dared not open the book, expecting to find bulky equations and unintelligible discussions of exotica. I couldn't have been further from the truth. "A Brief History of Time" defies the majority of science books in how easily it is accessible to the general readers. Instead of equations, one finds very simple diagrams beautifully explaining some of the strangest physical phenomena: space-time, relativity, black holes, the Big Bang. It is all in here, and a glossary is provided to remind readers of the meaning of some of the more exotic terms. Best of all, Hawking himself has played major roles in discovering and understanding some of those phenomena, so this book is an autobiography of sorts from one of the people who actually founded modern cosmology. One of the best things about this book is its brevity, making it possible for one to finish this book in an amount of time such that one remembers the beginning and does not lose sight of the big picture throughout. This is a major advantage over some of the other books like the thick "Black Holes" book by Kip Thorne. What this book lacks, though, is a bibliography to direct interested readers to other books on the topic. Perhaps this is a product of this book being a pioneer - very few other introductory books on science existed when it first appeared.
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