Rating: 
Summary: A great story
Review: This is one of the best popular books I have read about cosmology. What I liked in the book is that it does not try to dazzle the reader with exotic and complicated words. It describes in plain words how Einstein's idea of the "cosmological constant" developed over the years. When it was introduced it looked like a good idea, but was clearly marginal to the interests of current science; later, Einstein himself thought that it was a big blunder; now, almost a century later, the cosmological constant has become a key problem, which links the study of the origin of the Universe with the study of the ultimate building blocks of matter. Aczel's book tells this fantastic story.After reading it I realized that that the book's title is very proper: it is the story of the search of God. But this is not the God of the common religions: it is Einstein's God, the Mind who wrote the ultimate equation. No title could better describe Einstein's motivation. While telling this story, Aczel describes the life of Einstein and his times: I read many things about Einstein that I did not know. In conclusion, it is a book worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read, but short on specifics
Review: Well first it bears noting that this book, clocking in at just over 200 pages, reads quickly and smoothly. And it is an engaging subject. But here is my main problem. The author glossess over most of the mathematics that explain Einstein's field equation. He gives the reader the definition of a tensor, but doesn't really show him what Einstein's tensors looked like, thus the gravitational field equation lacks full meaning as presented by the author. The way I see it, this book is only fully comprehensible (meaning one can fully understand the dynamics of Einstein's general field equation) if one knows all the math behind it. Since Aczel did not include this math, he must assume that 1) The readers already know it (in which case, they probably don't need to read this book) or 2) The readers wouldn't be able to understand it. Since we must assume the latter to be the case, the book falls far short of imparting the understanding about the nature of the universe it intends to. I would have gladly read another 150 pgs just to see the math worked out. Still, the concepts are fascinating and the explanations are clear. Reccomended.
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