Rating: 
Summary: A REALLY GREAT BOOK, YET ...
Review: In terms of explaining the latest advances of physics, Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is irreproachable: easy to read, rigorous and as elegant as the model of Universe he describes so well. I hadn't studied physics since 1974 and the amount of knowledge reading his book allowed me to acquire with little effort was fabulous."The Elegant Universe" would certainly deserve a SIX STAR rate were it not for a fact that is neither his nor his book's fault. When Greene takes for granted that reality as perceived by man is 3D, he also, unconsciously perhaps, ignores exactly the small but significant percentage of human beings that, throughout the centuries, not to say millennia, have repeatedly reported just the opposite, that is, that reality is more than the 3D experience our material senses can perceive. Such a materialistic and unquestionably biased approach, not questioning the strong reasons science once had to adopt it, is responsible today for theoretical physicists feeling themselves as lonely adventurers climbing nature's knowledge peak, having no one higher up to suggest the correct direction to take. Experimental physicists are standing at a quite lower position in the peak climbing path than they could be today due to the limitations of material instrumentation available for probing nature's intimate reality. Assuming everything is material, they simply dwell in the same biased position a Neanderthal man would be when faced with a computer running a sophisticated software. The Neanderthal man would be tempted to believe the software had been produced by the computer, the same way scientists are led to assume that the mind is produced by the brain. Such a biased belief deprives modern science from using the most sophisticated and powerful probing instrument ever available to man, which is man's own mind. Mystics, prophets, mediums, channelers, no matter how one calls them, are just human beings whose mind has the capacity to travel in other dimensions. Despite their lack of scientific understanding, they are surely higher up on nature's knowledge peak climbing path than theoretical physicists are. No matter that they may not be solidly grounded on the rock of the peak, but rather floating somewhere around. The fact that cannot be ignored is that they are the only living beings physicists can count upon to guide their climbing quest for truth. It is an absolute shame and an incredible loss for science that so few scientists perceive such an absurd sate of things.
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Summary: Upward bound
Review: Understanding this book is like a hard climb up a mountain. But, oh, the view.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This is a wonderful book. It is true you don't need to know a big deal of physics or math to understand the fundamental concepts of relativity and superstring theory. But beware, you DO need to know how to read!! Duh!? Leon C. LaBrecque are you READING this? Anyway, a must read for everyone interested in science. Highly recomended, you can't be dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: MAGNIFICENT
Review: This book is a work of art. Wow, it may well be the best, most mind expanding, poetically written book I have ever read.
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Summary: The fairy tale of modern physics
Review: If you've never had more than a high-school physics but you were always interested and fascinated by the universe this will be the perfect reading. The style of simplifying physical and mathematical problems to an understandable level plus the extensive number of examples will make it easy to swallow the pages. I can't say the same for some of the concepts even though the author did as much as possible for the visualization. You may find your mind and imagination wandering in the world of Plank or jumping in the depths of a black hole. The happy end is long expected but not achieved yet. Although the beautiful string theory seems a bit shaky on places, in my opinion the book is worth reading.
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Summary: String Theory for the Layman
Review: The author does a good job presenting string theory and the concept of alternate universes in somewhat easy to understand terms. Effective uses of analogy serve the cause well. The subject matter, while technically complex, is presented in such a way that the reader should have little difficulty in grasping the subject matter. In the tradition of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time, Brian Greene's book is a easy to understand, mindbending look into the unseen forces that shape our very reality.
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Summary: A true challenge
Review: I love this book! The first part about relativity is very readable and stimulates the brain. The second part about quantum mechanics and stringtheory is challenging, but it gives satisfaction when you get a glimpse what stringtheory is really about. This book really goes in-depth, be sure that you know what you're starting when you pick up the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, bad science
Review: This book is about a scientific theory intended to unify all physics. Experimentally, its facts are either in principle unobservable (strings are smaller than Planck's constant) or practically unobservable (at one point in the book the author mentions that a particle accelerator larger that the known universe would be required to carry out some important experiments). Mathematically, its equations are not solvable because they are not knowable; just approximate solutions to approximations of the equations are available. Theoretically, this grand unifying theory is actually a jumble of 5 (or 6, depending how you count them) theories that, as conjectured on flimsy numerical evidence, are unified by a 6th (7th) theory, M-theory (M may stand for "mysterious", according to the author). Intuitively, we are required to accept a 10 (or 11, depending on the variety of theory) dimensional space curled into any one of an infinite family of abstruse mathematical spaces. I can continue but I don't want to give away all the plot. The book is well enough written, although not as well as other similar popularizing books such as "A Brief History of Time" or "The Emperor's New Mind", but the attempt to sell string theory fails terribly. String theory comes across as an ultra-speculative contraption standing on the shakiest possible experimental and mathematical foundations. The fact that it's "the only game in town", the only active attempt to unify relativity and quantum theory does not make it more acceptable.
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Summary: I cried at the end
Review: I must admit that this book and my feeble understanding of the physics and related mathematics it described caused me some strain. Still, one shouldn't take this to mean that this is a textbook, or that it is littered throughout with equations and diagrams. Confusing as it was to undertand these concepts (I re-read many pages and still don't understand except in the vaguest notion of a notion of understanding) it is through no fault of the author, whose writing style I really enjoyed and through which I was able to infer the *implications* of what cutting-edge physics is finding about the universe. I was also able to get a glimpse of science's world view and share in the delight, the utter beauty of mystery and discovery and mystery all over again. Don't ask me why I cried at the end. I'm not really sure - but maybe thats why. Bottom line, a very good read people.
Rating:
Summary: A tour de force
Review: For those who liked "A Brief History of Time"(Hawking)" and "The Emporer's New Mind"(Penrose), this is a non-specialist tour de force of physics with a purpose: to explain how General Relativy and Quantum Mechanics seem to collide in the worlds of the very small and very massive, and then provide a means knitting the two theories together so that they require one another. Greene writes with the clarity of Feynman. Though he argues for superstring theory, he laudably does not overstate his case.
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