The Universe in a Nutshell

Rating:
Summary: A Brave Attempt to Explain the Inexplicable.
Review: I find it difficult to believe that any of the reviewers who gave this book 5 stars have read the book. 4 1/2 must surely relate to awe of the author. My rating is five stars for Chapter 6, one for all the rest.

The reviewer who stated "Hardly anything in here is known to exist. Things like 11-dimensional supergravity, p-branes, and a number of other things he mentions are nothing more than purely theoretical constructs that have no verification in the real universe. They exist only in his mind.", has hit the nail squarely and completely on the head and little more need be said on the relevance of the subjects Hawking presents to the average person.

Describing the matter contained in the book as theories is questionable. Theories are accepted if they provide predictions that can be verified or refuted. It is unlikely that any of the theories which describe multi-dimensional spacetime, p-branes (those of us for whom he wrote the book?), strings, supergravity, time loops and other fascinating but useless concepts in the real world, will ever be either verified or refuted. Should a theory not be accompanied by a suggestion for testing it? How does one approach describing a test to verify or refute the theory associated with worm-holes? What real world information indicates the existence or structure of any of these concepts? Hawkings leaves that out.

On the positive side, Amazon's price for the book is nearly a gift for two parts of the book alone, the Glossary and Chapter 6, Our Future? Star Trek or Not?. Chapter 6 is a highly thought provoking shot at predicting our future in terms of the real world, and is probably accurate. The Glossary contains most of the useful matter in the book. Many of the superb illustrations in this well produced book also contain interesting concepts, but as other reviewers have stated, they fall short of clarifying their targets. Try to find this book in your local public library, read Chapter 6, xerox the Glossary, and put the book quickly back on the shelf before getting totally bemused/confused by the rest of it.

All of the books' subject matter is grist for the mills of brains such as Hawkings', but you should pass on this book unless you are curious to read material incomprehensible to lesser mortals. Much material is simply thrown at you with no hint of rationale - take it or leave it - Hawking has spoken - the arrogance factor mentioned by another reviewer.

Better reading is "Show Me God" by Fred Heeren.

Rating:
Summary: The uncracked nutshell
Review: I remember reading "A Brief History of Time" and loving it, so it was with great anticipation I started this one. Sadly, I was disappointed. The book is dumbed-down to the point of being almost incomprehensible and the pictures are largely useless (pretty, but useless). Hawking makes statements without providing explanations or, worse, he makes statements that literally make no sense. How can the outside of a sphere make contact with the outside of another sphere (branes in the book) except at one point? What does it mean to say time might be represented by lines of longitude? (The lines of latitude I understood, at least.) Why does the intersection of two time streams produce an area where time stands still? Lest you think me unusually dumb, I actually majored in physics (good thing, or I'd have gotten even less out of it).

It was a good effort and the scope of the book is fascinating, but the execution makes it a one-time read only.

Rating:
Summary: Abridged too far?
Review: It seems crass to approach a literary phenomenon through the medium of audio cassette tape, but I have to confess it's not a book I would have had the patience to read in the conventional form. Maybe it's because I don't rate Hawking the Writer as highly as Hawking the Physicist, and it's true I've found the man's writing style ('A Brief History of Time', 'Black Holes and Baby Universes') rather unengaging in the past. But cosmology is a subject that fascinates me, and I admit to some eagerness as I cued this one on the car's tape machine.

I didn't last the course. Hawking on tape is a different exerience than Hawking in print, not least because it's read by someone else and this doesn't work too well for a book written in the first person. Of course, very few of us know how Stephen Hawking really sounds and I admit I'd have ditched the tape for different reasons if it had featured Hawking's familiar 'robocop' intonation, but the incongruity of Tim Piggot-Smith voicing Hawking's words didn't seem to sit well.

Okay, cut to the chase. What's missing from the audio tape is the diagrams, and if there's one thing I've learned from the whole 'cosmology' genre it's that the message is in the diagrams. But there's more. I don't own a copy if the printed book so I need to tread carefully, but in my view, any book that explains the 'twin paradox' without explaining how it's paradoxical simply lacks credibility and is undeserving of further attention. So that's my excuse. Charitably, the audio cassette is 'abridged', so Hawking's off the hook. Perhaps it's abridged too far?

Rating:
Summary: Shell Game?
Review: I looked forward to Hawking's book to expand my understanding of the science I never had time for in school.
Sad to report, this slick book with great graphics has left me fraustrated at even a laymen's understanding of the "principles of the Universe."
Unfortunately, no one is writing about science like Carl Sagan did.

Rating:
Summary: Splendidly different
Review: I have read books on science and astronomy written by some of the best minds in their fields. The Universe In a Nutshell surpasses them all. Hawkings manages to tell his "story" in a way that allows the reader to understand exactly what he means. Using scientific terms only when necessary, Hawkings leads the reader through topics reflecting current physics research today. The illustrations are top notch and support the text well. If you have only one book of science in your home today, this will be the one you'll want. If you own a Brief History of Time already then you'll want this one also. Speaking of a Brief History of Time; the concepts it contains are difficult to grasp sometimes. But spend some "time" reading and pondering the information he provides. You won't be disappointed.
Hawkings should be voted educator of the year for what he has managed to do in The Universe in a Nutshell.

Rating:
Summary: VERY DISAPPOINTING
Review: I am so disappointed with this book. While the pictures are
nice, the text is largely useless. You can not learn from
this book. Instead, the author simply tells you one thing
after another with hardly any motivation and rarely giving
an explanation that lets you know what is going on. If you
want a book that you thumb through now and then, look at
some nice pictures, have a few jargony words thrown your
way, then you might like this. But if you want a book that
gives you a real glimpse of modern physics and gives you some
real insight into what is happening at the cutting edge and why,
then this book will leave you as disappointed as I am.

Rating:
Summary: Simplified Complexity
Review: Dr. Hawking takes the most complex theories at the forefront of physics and makes them easily understood without the use of mathematics. If you are interested in theories on time travel, black holes and the future possibilities of human evolution this is an excellent book. The book also brings to light P-branes, M-theory and the status on the search for the Theory of Everything. The beginning chapters clearly map out the evolution of physics from relativity to quantum mechanics. The book is not arranged so that progressing chapters are dependant on previous one. This gives the reader freedom to jump from chapter to chapter and not be lost. I found this very enjoyable reading and it left me wanting to read more.

Rating:
Summary: Dumbed-Down
Review: I'm afraid I'm one of those people not at all happy with this book. I found it badly written and essentially 'dumbed-down' a little too much in an attempt to have a wider appeal than a purely scientific community. While this is fine given that it is a popular science book, I don't think it does justice to the intelligence of even the non-science reader. I found that the illustrations, while plentiful were merely page-fillers.

Try again Stephen

Rating:
Summary: (Some) good pictures... nothing more
Review: Look,
I don't consider myself to be stupid, and I usually catch up pretty fast.
However, it seems to me that when this dude writes a book, he writes it for others like him.

Now, you do the math... There's no one else like him!

The book is EXTREMELY hard to understand. At least for me...the not so stupid guy.

He is NOT getting into details like another reviewer wrote, he just throws in his explanation and moves on, without more proper examples.

I was a very dissapointed, although I'm not gonna quit, and I'm gonna try again!

-RoNNY

Rating:
Summary: this "TIME" it is good
Review: Stephen has come along way, for such an educated man this is surprising and good news, it shows he wishes improvement. The book is both fact and theory of course however what makes Stephen different is that he he goes beyond anyone else in his endeavors. That is the main difference, as great scientists ideas exceed norms, we seem to think the idea to simple. This book deals considerably with time, and subatomic. The reason for this review is the question to buy the book, anyone having interest in the makings of the physical universe and time will be able to understand this book. I do know Stephen was heavily critisized for his poor writing in A Brief History of Time, with that he in fact took notice and wrote this book with that in mind. Do not relate the first write with this at all other than some of the content. This book is far ahead. Another book that I strongly recommend, goes into Time, the origins or "Big Bang" and explains why the mass collected and future is SB 1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox.