Rating: 
Summary: Hawking Sparkles
Review: I can't imagine anyone writing about physics and cosmology more clearly than Stephen Hawking. If you want to know the state of those fields today, and how they got where they are, this book is ideal. Several things set it apart from Hawking's bestseller, A Brief History of Time. In The Universe in a Nutshell, he provides more of the history of cosmological thinking, and goes on to give sparklingly clear descriptions of some more recent developments, such as branes (lower-dimensional spaces that are subsets of higher-dimensional universes) and M-theory, a meta-theory that unites supergravity and string theories. In the current book, Hawking also makes frequent and interesting use of the anthropic principle, which limits our universe in certain ways since if it were significantly different galaxies, stars, planets, and humans could not have appeared. I was surprised and pleased to find Hawking taking time to speculate on the future of humanity given our ability to create increasingly complex organisms, and electronic systems. And, the book is full of colorful and helpful illustrations. Like A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell is full of Hawking's witty asides. My favorite was, "Newton occupied the Lucasian chair at Cambridge that I now hold, though it wasn't electrically operated at that time." I found the book to be a delightful and highly informative read.Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, 2002)
Rating:
Summary: The hardcover is well worth the extra dough!
Review: I urge each and every one of you to spend the extra money on the hardcover version and not to waste your money on the paperback. Both contain hundreds of pictures, graphs, charts, doodles, etc. However, the pages in the HARDCOVER version are rendered in beautiful glossy color; while, the PAPERBACK version (including all illustrations) is plain BORING black and white. The difference is amazing. There is simply no comparison. You will NOT enjoy the paperback! The hardcover pages are of the highest quality paper - so splurge or you'll be sorry.
Rating: 
Summary: If you're up for it
Review: Stephen Hawking attempts to cover an enormous amount of ground in a relatively small space and succeeds rather well. Since I'm more familiar with some of the areas covered than with others, I found some parts of the book easier going than others. But I enjoyed it all and join in others' praise of the illustrations, which are well done and often clarify concepts that the written word alone struggles to pass on. Some reviewers have criticized the once-over-lightly treatment some topics get, but I think that misunderstands the intent here: Hawking is not out to provide detailed proofs, he is out to present the current state of scientific thinking on the matters at hand, and his intended audience is the educated layperson. Some of that thinking is admittedly speculative (and Hawking's wit and ego are both on display here) but the alert reader should have little difficulty recognizing where that occurs. So should you buy the book? If you're among those who bought A Brief History of Time but never read it, I expect not. But if you're interested in checking out some of the far reaches of current scientific thinking on the nature of existence - and if you either understand or aren't intimidated by the thought of working your way through sentences like "Black holes can be thought of as the intersections of p-branes in the extra dimensions of spacetime" - by all means do.
Rating: 
Summary: Differing Basics
Review: Time does not exist.Only motion exists.it is the yardstick not some fictional thing known as "time". Because we started out with the fiction and dimension it as v=d/t does not make the fiction true. the physical yardstick is v measured as a fraction of the speed of light. It is needed to measure d and with it t is only a crutch required by human senses perhaps but certainly not by reality. we measure both t and d using the same yardstick i.e. "v" so one of them does not exist. :)
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Summary: Yet another masterpiece from Hawking.
Review: Triyng climbing at the teory of everything, Hawking mind rest at camp base ,sharing his thougts with readers, and drawing us at science's most exstremes frontiers.
He seeems now blocked at a nutshell idea of the teory but that nutshell universe already show a navel cord connecting Hawking mathematical science to reader's sympaty.
Hoping for a solution describing the universe as a time black hole and entropy the result of Hawking termal radiation emission of the flat-to-present universe.
That could close the circle in a universe needing not only intelligent beeing, capable of writing about their mathematics discoverys but also enjoyng readers.
I concise form : completly recomended!
(Just a revised one and sorry i can't swich my spelling corrector on!)
Rating:
Summary: Yet another masterpiece from hawking.
Review: Trying climbing at the teory of everything,Hawking mind rest at camp base, sharing his thougts whith readers , and drawing us at science's most extremes frontiers.
He seems now blocked at a nutshell idea of the teory but that nutshell universe show a navel cord connecting Hawking mathematical science to reader's sympaty.
I still hope for a solution describing universe as fighting against any limitation in space and time, and asking man alliance in this, and entropy only as a punishement for our diffidence : if so, many basic changes can arrives and this book many differents editions.
That could give a reason to a universe needing not only humans roomys of writing about their mathematics discoverys but also smarts readers.
In concise form:completly recomended.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewaht light.
Review: This book looks good but there is not much substance in it. It has lots of pictures but not enough text. This book is fairly shallow in explainations. It raises more questions than answers. It does get better toward the end but if you want to read a better more explanatory and still easy to read book check out: TIME TRAVEL IN EINSTEIN'S UNIVERSE. Overall this book looks better than it is worth.
Rating: 
Summary: plagiarism?
Review: What Hawking missed out on in "A brief history of time" is attempted in the present book. This one is more glossy and some earlier sections are written in a manner which gives the impression that it may be understood by the layman. However, it also exemplifies the cult of the individual in that it is almost totally concerned with what "I" have done - even if there are apparent discrepancies between present and past claims. In his earlier book (on page 103) Hawking points out how an expression for the entropy of a black hole had been proposed by Bekenstein. Initially, he tells us, he did not accept its validity but eventually came to believe it, to the extent that, after he had given it his blessing, it came to be known as the Bekenstein-Hawking expression for the entropy of a black hole. In the present book, on page 63, the formula is claimed by Hawking to be his own, stating that HE discovered it in 1974. Notwithstanding this claim, it was Bekenstein who published his putative formula for the entropy of a black hole in 1972! Bekenstein tells us 'how he did it in a Physics tOday article published in January 1980!
Hawking also confuses information and entropy (see pages 63-64), since according to him 'entropy is nothing more than a measure of the total information contained in a system'. Apparently, Hawking has never heard of Brillouin's 'negentropy' and its distinction from entropy as a measure of disorder. It is ludicrous that we have to keep track of what is inside black holes in order to predict the radiation that comes out of them. Planck surely didn't have to put his head inside a radiation cavity to obtain his spectrum of black body radiation, which, astonishingly, Hawking derives for a black hole. Even more surprising is his claim that there is a characteristic spectrum of density fluctuations associated with thermal radiation which again, of course, Planck missed out on! It appears that Hawking knows nothing about the mechanism of thermal radiation when he claims that the wavelength can be larger than the size of the cavity containing it. Sorry, thermal radiation cannot be 'frozen in' when the wavelength becomes larger than the size of the event horizon. This is surely not the origin of cosmic background radiation left over from the early universe!
There is no lack of other examples showing his lapses of knowledge which could be cited. However, it is hoped that the 'Dark Age' into which Hawking is leading us will be only a slight fluctuation in the overall advancement of science.
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Summary: peterlor
Review: The previous reveiwer who suggests that this book is being removed and that Stephen Hawking does not want it published has got it entirely wrong. What he refers to is a completely different book. Universe in a Nutshell is a new work based on Hawking's new theories and the author and illustrators spent two years creating it. I know this because I was responsible for the artwork. It's a pity that so-called reveiwers are so ignorant and loud-mouthed without having the knowledge or intelligence needed to make comment.
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Summary: heroism in face of big questions
Review: Stephen Hawkings "The universe in a nutshell"
is filled with good natured humour, deep insights,
brilliant illustrations and a passion for the wonders
of the universe.
It is of course a popular book,
but even if one should know most its subject
matter in advance, it is never boring.
The author says he "doesn't answer God questions
anymore". Still, he answers a lot of questions that
sounds a lot like ersatz theological questions.
And no doubt Hawkings fame is the result of his
willingness to tackle such hard problems head-on. And
of course his heroism in face of a tragic disease.
The good natured humour in the book makes it all
a joy to read. -Simon
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