Rating: 
Summary: A Good Introduction to M-Theory
Review: I recommend this book only as latest update. For style and philosophical background, I recommend Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"; for historical and physical background, I recommend "Superstrings: A Theory of Everything?" eds. by P.C.W.Davies and J.Brown; for basic concret content, I recommend "Superstrings and the Search for The Thory of Everything" by E.David Peat, which also includes Roger Penrose's Twistor Theory. As latest update, Web surfing maybe will be more fun for some of us :-).
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good book, but be ready for some abstract ideas
Review: This is a about the best book I have read in string theory for the beginner. Being this is an extremely abstract idea, one needs a an open mind and a drive to understand cutting edge theortical physics. The first half of the book is comprehensible, the second half I had read sometimes 3 to 4 times.
Rating:
Summary: The latter half is a bear
Review: The first half of this book was fine. But the second half, with it's focus on too many unimportant technical details and uninteresting moment by moment discussions of the writing of his academic research papers, was hard to get through. Skip this and read "Hyperspace" by Kako for a much better discussion of string theory.
Rating:
Summary: Best Cosmological read since "A Brief History of Time"
Review: Excellent insight...A must for the die hard physics fan
Rating: 
Summary: Finally an explanation of all this string theory stuff
Review: I've been waiting for a book on this subject for a long time. While it is a challenging read (you'll find yourself stuck on one paragraph trying to figure out what he just wrote) it's quite lucidly written. An immensely fascinating read. I truly hope he follows this up with another installment on the latest advances down the road.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, beautiful exposition
Review: This is a really inspiring book. It's a huge credit to the author that his survey of some of the deepest and most advanced frontiers of human inquiry is so lucid and readable. It's lucky that someone so central to this research has the ability to create such a successful exposition.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written!
Review: This is probably the only up-to-date popular book on string theory. Well-written by a serious researcher. No word can describe faithfully its value and `elegance'. Gribbin's book is not even close to it (in fact I really recommend J. Gribbin to read this book and withdraw his book from the market!)Incidentally, I would like to make a somewhat (un)related comment. Before I baught this book, I went over these reviews and I noticed that some readers `recommend' the Bible According to Einstein. Therefore I went over the reviews for that book in order to buy it. However, I noticed that the reviews were NOT `symmetrical'. I mean, that I would expect that a reader who recommended The Bible According to Einstein in this page would also recommend The Elegant Universe on the other page. To my surprise, this was NOT the case. The reviewers either just praised the Bible According to Einstein only or submitted no entry there. I have concluded that the anonymous author (a scientific book without an author?) is trying to promote his book by unethical methods (i.e. by posting brief reviews on a best-selling book that draw attention to his mediocre book). Dear readers please be aware of the trap!
Rating:
Summary: Great Overview of the State-of-the-Art in Physics
Review: Excellent book on the latest technological breakthoughs in string theory and M-theory. Written in challenging language, but understandable. Highly Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising and commendable
Review: The author succeeds in giving us something that many others on the subject of physics never do -- an objective evaluation of relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory today. The degree to which the author divorces himself from his involvement in physics to give us this view is both surprising and commendable. As a result, we are given a no-nonsense list of experiments which can be performed to prove or disprove string theory, an insight into the single most important failing of modern-day particle accelerators (the inability to focus the beam to Planck-length scales), and the fundamental knowledge necessary to identify the theoretical mathematical concepts required to complete the equations having to do with string theory. The reader is left with a sense that the world of physics is about to undergo a revolution as important as the one led by Einstein. This time, however, the rest of us are clued-in beforehand and invited to share in the excitement as it happens.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Nice Science Book
Review: Mr. Greene uses old and original metaphors to explain difficult physics concepts. He writes very well. Two other books that I enjoyed reading this year are THE INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE and THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO EINSTEIN.
| 
