Rating: 
Summary: 5 stars for the title but wait Steph really write this book.
Review: This book comes from seven Hawking lectures:history of the history of universe,big-bang,black-holes,Hawking emission,no boundary condition,a (crazy?)arrows of time explication:if acepted it means evil(universal unconscious disorder) always has the last word respect intelligence, I hope a such proof impossible, and finally how whe are trying to find an unified theory of all interactions in physics.
I am a Sci-Fi fan that read about science only to be able to understand some difficult Sci-fi storys, so i approve this book,also if it is not (yet?) authorised or revised by Hawking,as a provocation to him to rewrite this book periodicallly.
So i Sci-fi provocate him also more to rewrite it by reviewing its next future edition.
In this book Steph will examine the theory of everything in this way:let A to be the theory of everything than for time going to now A has to prove A but so, for Goedel theorem of incompletess ,than A cannot be a numerical theory but it has to be a theory made in a self contradicting language:plain english.
In fact every book trying to explain a mathematic theory of everything has to start whith an explication of Why men speaks and dont simply give numbers if it exist a numeric form of theory of everything.
More precisely,how can mathematics explain that self-awareness was born thanks to unifying and so in a universe of gender(lion+rabbit=;fire+water=;etc.) so a world where usually there is a solution due to the kind of involved objects without need of numbers,and only by science we are going to study situations like (x lions and x wolfs;x Bad and x bad;x doctors and x viruses etc.) where x is a number or a function and the solution depend from x?
Which is the algebraic transformation that aggregates numbers so much, that they most often, don't need any more to be considered by their value because their same shape become distinctive?
It is evident that,aside for some hope based on cellular automata and similar,actual mathematics still miss the basic algebric tool to explain how,our gender world derives from quantity,and basic research in this field is still needed, not to return to a medioval gender culture, but to include it.
Anyway however you are going in this reasoning,Hawking is a perfect walking friend in those questions, for the clarity of his thinking and the deepness of his mathematics(if you where so lucky that you can follow him hight there ),so I hope Hawking will forgive we readers ,if we like to steal a litle bit of his knowledge (we are anyway in debt with him for his not been a Nobel!).
So,for the limited aim of unifying relativity and quantum mechanics, Hawking works on blacks holes to me shows that any border to this universe has to emit a form of Hawking radiation that destroy that limit and so universe can always expand.
This does time too in contraining every interacting thing to the same Plank instant.
That time Hawking radiation propagate to future in form of historic residue and this is why yesterday's rose color is never so bright than today's .
Can it propagate to past in form of scientific law so that quantum mechanics is probabilistic for future but has to be kept historically deterministic about the same past misuration and so time contemporneousness become more widen with universe age?, if any scientific law has to be mathematically consistent whith Hawking radiation how can we ignore his lecturers,how can we stop looking for this phenomenon?.
So Hawking work has already proved not only that the universe can have not a start and end, but also that anything inside can have not,been made by the same equation.
So i recommend to buy this book, and if you dont read it put it in library ,just look sometime to the title and dream about when it will come next edition and meanwhile we can let it at right side of Douglas Adams's : -"The Salmon of Doubt" - this ending Sic-fi and Hawking's :-"The theory of everything" - beginning Science: be careful universes can spring in the middle.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Hawking's best work
Review: This book is a collection of lectures in which Steven attempts to built a framework for understanding the universe through gradually more and more complex steps. Like Brief History of Time, it is cumulative, in that previous chapters are mostly rquired for subsequent.I thought Steven's personal agendas come out too strongly in this book, specifically his glossing over of string theory and multi-dimensional spacetime. This entire line of research is relegated to exactly 3 sentences. He also ignores most of the problems that occur when trying to integrate quantum mechanics and gravity, choosing to try to find ways around this necessary integration instead. Much of the book is spent trying to prove a non-singularity-based Big Bang theory in an effort to retain the standard-model laws of physics all the way back to the beginning of time. Regarding the quantum mechanical tide in the early 19th century, Eistein's famously responded, "God does not play dice with the Universe." Hawking is fighting a similar multi-dimensional tide that increasingly provides a far more elegant view of the Universe. If you're looking for your first Hawking book, this isn't it. Buy Brief History instead. It's dated, but much better.
Rating:
Summary: Not Hawking's best work
Review: This book is a collection of lectures in which Steven attempts to built a framework for understanding the universe through gradually more and more complex steps. Like Brief History of Time, it is cumulative, in that previous chapters are mostly rquired for subsequent. I thought Steven's personal agendas come out too strongly in this book, specifically his glossing over of string theory and multi-dimensional spacetime. This entire line of research is relegated to exactly 3 sentences. He also ignores most of the problems that occur when trying to integrate quantum mechanics and gravity, choosing to try to find ways around this necessary integration instead. Much of the book is spent trying to prove a non-singularity-based Big Bang theory in an effort to retain the standard-model laws of physics all the way back to the beginning of time. Regarding the quantum mechanical tide in the early 19th century, Eistein's famously responded, "God does not play dice with the Universe." Hawking is fighting a similar multi-dimensional tide that increasingly provides a far more elegant view of the Universe. If you're looking for your first Hawking book, this isn't it. Buy Brief History instead. It's dated, but much better.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading for an arm chair theoretical physicist.
Review: This book is a very easy read because it is written so well. No math of course. I enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to reading some of the bigger books that Hawking has out. This book goes into very little detail but made me want to know more.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes complex ideas much easier to understand.
Review: This book is basically a history and philosophy about chemistry, physics, and especially astronomy. Ideas discussed in this book are very complex, yet broken down very well into understandable chunks. Still, a general backround in the physical sciences is necessary to really grasp what he's saying. One way he makes ideas understandable is by using simple analogies. For example, he is talking about how as the universe expands, all bodies around the earth move away from it, making it seem like we really are the center of the universe. However, he clears this up by offering the analogy of a balloon being blown up that has dots all over it. From the perspective of any dot, all the other dots are moving away from it and there really is no center. I found it to be a fast read, but one that I wanted to go over once again just to understand things better.
Rating:
Summary: I CAN'T BELIEVE I UNDERSTOOD IT !
Review: THIS BOOK MAKES EVERYTHING I HAVE ALWAYS WOUNDERED ABOUT REASONABLY EASY TO UNDERSTAND.IT ALMOST READS LIKE A MYSTERY WHERE THE READER GETSB AT THE END OF EACH CHAPTER TO FIND OUT "WHO DONE IT."I LEARNED MORE FROM THIS BOOK THAN FROM ALL OF MY TIME IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.CLEARLY THIS IS PROFFESSOR HAWKINGS MASTER WORK.
Rating: 
Summary: lacks substance
Review: This book provides a historical perspective of the events leading up to the quest for finding a unified theory. It is a very light read that can be finished in a couple of hours. In some points, Steven Hawking dwelves a little deeper, especially in his own work on blackholes. However, if the reader is looking for more substance, especially into today's challenges, then I recommend the following book, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene.
Rating:
Summary: Treading water
Review: This book, like the theory of relativity, is something I can grasp for a brief period of time and then it slips away. The first chapters gave a fascinating history and mini-review of where we've been but as he progressed I could not get my mind around some of the concepts he was discussing and some of the basic terms he used weren't explained. Such is the fate when trying to appeal to a broader range of people. For me, Carl Sagan's works were much easier to understand. Hawking does an admirable job but if you do not have a science background, or are bent in that direction, this may not be the best book for you. For us poor huddled masses what Hawking needs to do is get a good ghost writer with a minimal science background and have the writer come up with analogies to what Hawking is discussing. I know I could have used some additional explaining when he started talking about the extra 20+ dimensions, singularities and the string theory. Around the string theory I stopped treading water and drowned. All in all though, I would like to see more of trying to explain science to us unwashed and sadly miss Sagan. Hawking is to be commended and I hopes he continues the attempts. I will attempt to read his future works in that direction.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Journey
Review: This is a book that takes the most incomprehensible material, theories, and operations of our universe, and breaks them down to the simplest form. Using "balloon" analogies and simple descriptions, Hawking is able to simplify the theories of space, time, and, well, 'Everything' else. I loved this book! Whether you're a fan of science fact, or science fiction, this is a book that will expand your understanding and appreciation of our wonderful universe.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging introduction to the man and his work
Review: This is a collection of seven related lectures by Hawking originally published in 1996 under the title, The Cambridge Lectures: Life Works. He does not cover as much ground here as in did in A Brief History of Time, but what he does cover he does so in a charming and engaging style. There are some few statements here that could be interpreted as less than modest--although not by me--and a mistaken prediction or two, which may be a reason that Hawking is not pleased with this book's publication. He might also object to the title, since neither a "Theory of Everything" nor a conclusive answer to the origin and fate of the universe are presented. However, Hawking does address these questions, and his expression is interesting to read and has the agreeable characteristic of being laconic. There are no equations in the book, no mathematics as such, and everything is explained in language that would be intelligible to a high school student. There are the usual droll Hawking jokes about God and His intentions, facetious, epigram-like understatements (I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. p. 66) and witty asides about the convergence of politics on physics, as when he mentions a particle accelerator the size of the Solar System that "would not be funded under current economic conditions." A good chunk of the book is devoted to black holes (about which Hawking is or was the world's foremost authority) and whether they have "hair" and "sweat" or not. Hawking avers on page 92 that if a primordial black hole is discovered "emitting a lot of gamma and X rays," he will get the Nobel Prize. This is an ironic lament since, as he explains later on, it is most likely that even if these very difficult to observe and very ancient black holes do exist, they are mostly evaporated by now, and so it is probable there will be no Nobel for Hawking. He also discusses a "no boundary condition" (p.119) of the big bang universe which seems to begin and end in a singularity in real-time while in imaginary time there are no singularities, just beginning and ending poles, like the north and south poles of the finite, unbounded surface of the earth. (p. 139) I especially like this idea since it does away with the infinite singularity and the theological implications that some draw from such a beginning of the universe. As Hawking asks rhetorically, in a "completely self-contained" universe with no boundary or edge--a universe "neither created nor destroyed"--what place would there be for a creator? (p. 126) He also addresses string theory, and I was pleased to read that he is no more enamored of all those little curled up dimensions than I am. He says the theory has several other problems that need to be worked out, not the least of which is that we still don't know whether all the infinities will cancel out. (p. 159) Hawking closes with his ideas about the prospect for a Theory of Everything. He gives three possibilities: (1) There is a "complete unified theory which we will someday discover..." (2) There's no ultimate theory, "just an infinite sequence of theories that describe the universe more and more accurately." (3) There's no theory, period: "Events...occur in a random and arbitrary manner." He seems to like (1) believing "that there is a good chance...[for] a complete unified theory by the end of the century..." Apparently--since he is speaking from circa 1996--he means the twentieth century. In that case he's wrong since we haven't yet gotten such a theory. For the record, I like (2). I think that our present "laws" are approximations that we will continue to improve on. I believe we develop the ability through science to better and better order our environment and to increase our knowledge. I don't believe we are actually discovering "ultimate truth." Hawking asks here as he has elsewhere, "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?" Why is there anything at all? He believes that if we do discover a complete theory, we will then be able to answer this question, and then we would "know the mind of God."
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