adudemaybe's review
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
bahamutz's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
lindzieh's review against another edition
5.0
Understood most of the books. There were a couple of chapters that were over my head, but then I never really took a lot of physics in college. Very interesting read. Stephen Hawking is a genius
jammasterjamie's review
5.0
I'd been intimidated by this book as it sat on my shelf for years - decades, in fact! I was wrong. Hawking has created a work that is wonderfully mind-expanding and easily accessible at the same time and this is a fascinating tour of time and space through modern science. Yes, there were several sentences and quite a few paragraphs that I had to read a couple of times to get a grasp on what they meant, but that was more on me and my distracted mind than it had anything to do with Hawking's writing. This was a great way to spend a Friday night, a surprising page-turner, and it left me inspired with a lot to think about.
jyb's review against another edition
challenging
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
4.25
I really enjoyed the content, but around 15% of the time Hawking explains that because of A, B should be obvious, when it really isn’t. However, most of the descriptions are understandable (if only because I already knew the general basics of the book). The illustrations felt kind of pointless at times and only helped visualize his explanations maybe 20% of the time. Combining A Brief History of Time and Universe in a Nutshell also kind of felt a little useless, as the latter overlaps with the former for almost the entirety of the book, and began explaining science unique to it only at the end. However, most of the content in general was interesting and contained information I hadn’t learned before, which I liked. 4.25 stars.
cyranoreads's review
4.0
Despite feeling that my level of grasp for some of the material remained in superficial strata, my wider vision of the marvels of the universe was piqued and expanded. There's such a rich history here of our development of astrophysics and cosmology, and how the developing concepts were fitted together to see new, often counterintuitive, truths and concepts. The illustrations added substantially to presentation and comprehension, so I highly recommend this version of the book.
swoody788's review
4.0
Much easier to read than Kip Thorne's [b:Black Holes and Time Warps|17362|Black Holes and Time Warps Einstein's Outrageous Legacy|Kip S. Thorne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388289273s/17362.jpg|18929], but I found that it was helpful I was already familiar with most of the concepts and characters. This had been on my to-read list for a while but after watching Hawking's biopic-ish The Theory of Everything last week I decided to put it off no longer, and I was able to blow through pretty quickly. Not only is Stephen Hawking one of the most brilliant and well-known theoretical physicists and cosmologists of our time, he's a decent author and able to convey complicated theories in an easy-to-understand way. I read the updated and illustrated version, which was helpful in understanding the information presented.
I'm much more interested in relativity than quantum mechanics and this book has confirmed that.
I'm much more interested in relativity than quantum mechanics and this book has confirmed that.