Reviews
Die Kürzeste Geschichte Der Zeit Lesung by Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow, Stephan Benson
disastrouspenguin's review against another edition
5.0
Consumed as an audiobook.
While there's nothing earth-shattering about the prose, Hawking manages to condense a large portion of the what-everyone-should-know-but-doesn't pile of science into this little bitty book. And he does it without allowing the material to become too dense, abstract, or technical. Much easier to parse for the layman (at least, this layman) than the original, A Brief History of Time, I still ended up rewinding multiple times to be able to process the concept(s) he lays out.
I am adding a new shelf to my Goodreads collection because of this book: "read-again". I think in the future I will choose to read the physical book in order to switch back and forth between chapters, and re-read paragraphs more easily.
While there's nothing earth-shattering about the prose, Hawking manages to condense a large portion of the what-everyone-should-know-but-doesn't pile of science into this little bitty book. And he does it without allowing the material to become too dense, abstract, or technical. Much easier to parse for the layman (at least, this layman) than the original, A Brief History of Time, I still ended up rewinding multiple times to be able to process the concept(s) he lays out.
I am adding a new shelf to my Goodreads collection because of this book: "read-again". I think in the future I will choose to read the physical book in order to switch back and forth between chapters, and re-read paragraphs more easily.
flappie55's review against another edition
3.0
The first few chapters of the book are very well done. They explain the concepts of Special Relativity and The Uncertainty Principle and the different forces in the Standard Model in a very brief but clear manner.
The part of Black Holes that follows after that is still pretty nice and quite readable. But becomes more difficult to read because Hawking tries to explain it quite thoroughly but doesn't have enough time to go too much into detail, which makes this chapter very vague. In the rest of the book this vagueness is even more prominent because the writer really want to give an in-depth expenation, but doesn't have enough space to do so.
A few remarks on the writing style: First if all Hawking's sense of humor is clearly present in his book as well. A few funny sentences here and there take your mind off the difficult physics and make the whole much more readable (although I missed this humour again in the last few chapters).
Secondly what I found somewhat irritating was the constant reference for God an the Bible in this book. True, historically there used to be some debate between science and religion but nowadays a book about science shouldn't mention religion in the way Hawking does. Mostly because when he mentions it, it is almost always irrelevant to the topic he is talking about. This conclusion for example (which is 5 pages long in my edition) mentions God at least 6 times. Personally I find this very irritating and unnecessary.
Another thing that struck me as a bit odd is that the book is not that scientific in the sense that some of the things Hawking proposes aren't generally accepted by the scientific community (as far as I know) but he doesn't mention this. It is a really nice popular science book but not that scientific.
In the end I think if one is interested in the basics of quantum physics and relativity the first few chapters of this book are definitely a recommended read. If you are interested in Black Holes, GUTs and The Big Bang, maybe try finding another book.
The part of Black Holes that follows after that is still pretty nice and quite readable. But becomes more difficult to read because Hawking tries to explain it quite thoroughly but doesn't have enough time to go too much into detail, which makes this chapter very vague. In the rest of the book this vagueness is even more prominent because the writer really want to give an in-depth expenation, but doesn't have enough space to do so.
A few remarks on the writing style: First if all Hawking's sense of humor is clearly present in his book as well. A few funny sentences here and there take your mind off the difficult physics and make the whole much more readable (although I missed this humour again in the last few chapters).
Secondly what I found somewhat irritating was the constant reference for God an the Bible in this book. True, historically there used to be some debate between science and religion but nowadays a book about science shouldn't mention religion in the way Hawking does. Mostly because when he mentions it, it is almost always irrelevant to the topic he is talking about. This conclusion for example (which is 5 pages long in my edition) mentions God at least 6 times. Personally I find this very irritating and unnecessary.
Another thing that struck me as a bit odd is that the book is not that scientific in the sense that some of the things Hawking proposes aren't generally accepted by the scientific community (as far as I know) but he doesn't mention this. It is a really nice popular science book but not that scientific.
In the end I think if one is interested in the basics of quantum physics and relativity the first few chapters of this book are definitely a recommended read. If you are interested in Black Holes, GUTs and The Big Bang, maybe try finding another book.
vmatienzol's review against another edition
5.0
Genial libro para empezar en el mundo de la física. Creo que es mejor leer c/capítulo dos veces para entender bien todo jajaja.