Popular Science Review - The Universe in a Nutshell

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Review - The Universe in a Nutshell - Stephen Hawking

Where A Brief History of Time left most of its readers baffled (though largely because they weren't prepared to let go, sit back and enjoy the ride), Hawking's new book is much better aimed at wide popular audience. With lavish illustrations it sets out to explain the workings of the universe in layperson's terms. It also has an innovative tree structure, so that readers can skip from chapter to chapter without losing the thread.

In 200 highly illustrated pages, Hawking is pushing the frontiers of popular physics beyond relativity and quantum theory, past superstring theory and imaginary time, into a dizzying new world of M-theory and branes. This is a remarkable thing to attempt - and who better to do so than Stephen Hawking.

It's true that the book suffers a little by simply trying to cover too much, and often the concepts that he should be explaining because they are so mind-boggling get rushed over, but there's a lot that's good here. Hawking is famed as a Star Trek fan (he even appeared in a 'holographic' poker game in Star Trek TNG), and you will find references to the TV series through the book. It's not perfect, but it's probably the best beginners overview of our current understanding of the universe around - so well worth exploring.

In hardback.

Also in audio: Also in audio CD:

Reviewed by Jo Reed

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