Rating: 
Summary: How Higgs fields and Monopoles lead to Inflation
Review: The book provides a very readable account of how the study in one field has a revolutionary impact on another. The Inflationary Universe follows clearly the chronology of events that led to the formulation of the theory and frequent reference is made to diary notes that apparently were kept actual all along. Starting out with the premise that within the bounds of Grand Unified Theories the existence of magnetic monopoles is a theoretical necessity, Guth sets out to determine more accurately their characteristics and their potential abundance. All results of calculations made with a sensible set of parameters and their spread, point at a production of a high and verifiable quantity of very heavy monopoles, that in the real world around us are not observed. In an attempt to explain away the overproduction of monopoles, a study is made of the behaviour of a simplified combination of Higgs fields. Under the pressure of publishing timely the potentially positive result of the outcome of this study and confronted with the publication of similar results by a competing scientist (Preskill) Guth frantically tries to get added value to to his paper. A detailed analysis of the consequences of the decay of the Higgs fields shows an unexpected behaviour of gravity, which during the phase transition period until the decay of the false vacuum becomes repulsive, stretching space itself exponentially in the process. The concept of Inflation is born. It is only at this point that physicist Guth enters the arena of cosmology and associates the results with cosmological problems such as flatness and isotropy.
The published paper therefore addresses those issues instead of the monopole problem which was the target of the paper, even though Inflation had resolved the lack of observed monopoles as well. Triumph abounds.
In the subsequent section of the book the shortcomings of the initial inflationary theory become apparent. Those are addressed in a systematic manner and it is shown how bubbles, domains and domain walls have repercussions on the viability of the theory. It all is a matter of how the decay of the false vacuum proceeds, how the initially assumed combination of Higgs fields looks like and how the inflationary period ends.
Though personally I do not really like the numerous side steps made into the personal matters of the author, those do provide contextual inside in how revolutionary findings come about and make the book quite readable for non subject matter experts.
A book to be recommended to those seriously interested in physics and its implications for cosmology.
Rating: 
Summary: Cosmic Masterpiece!
Review: Truly exceptional book exceeding all my expectations. I had two concerns when I bought the book: I might be bored with most of it (I was aware that Inflationary theory itself is only about a third of the book and I was already fairly well read in cosmology) and it might be a bit outdated (prior to this book, I had just finished reading Silk's "The Big Bang" - the most up-to-date account of the theory). Yet I am glad to report that I was thoroughly proven wrong on both counts.While two thirds of the book is an "introduction," all the topics covered are extremely relavant to inflation and cosmology in general. And although the author doesn't assume the reader has any prior knowledge of the topics he covers, they're presented in sufficient detail to complement the knowledge of most laymen, even those who are not new to cosmology. These topics include the Big Bang theory, Standard model of particle physics, Grand Unification Theories, and Higgs Fields, to name a few. To address my second concern that the book might be outdated - it is really a non-issue. Although the Inflaitionary theories are not fully developed yet and still make up an area of active research, the general idea descibed in the book remains the same, while the details maybe beyond anyone without a phD in physics anyway. Guth's "Inflationary Universe" is a truly enjoyabe read (even appendices in the end [on gravitational energy, blackbody radiation, and Newton's static universe] are incredibly informative). I unreservedly recommend it to anyone, but it should probably not be your first book on cosmology, as it's a bit advanced (Hawking's "Brief History of Time" is probably the best starting point).
Rating: 
Summary: A Bridge to Modern Cosmology
Review: When I was a boy there were two theories of how our world came to be: the Hoyle stationary state and the Gamov big bang. In Britain Gamov wasn't popular. Now days Hawking doesn't even mention Guth's name in his lectures on his new Instanton universe. The idea of false vacuum, negative pressure and exponential inflation have never been popular, but even Hawking can't make the big bang work without an inflationary period. Guth dumbed this book down so that there are no equations. I suppose we could go to his original articles to see them, but we bought the book so we wouldn't have to do college library crawling and xeroxing. So as much as the author is and does give in this book, it is still a failure. Don't buy it: find a book which also offers you a chance to see it is all smoke and mirrors where gravity and charge hadn't been formed; where a universe of between .5 grams and 25 grams became
all we can see today and more. You deserve to actually see the equations that predict the fluctuations in the comic background.
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