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baffi's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
4.25
spinstah's review against another edition
Mack is a great science communicator, what I read of this was very engaging and colloquial. But these are complex topics that are basically sliding right off my brain.
swans_reads's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
4.5
Not the type of book that I normally read but I quite enjoyed this one. Like someone just sat you down and explained their hyper-fixation to you. I’m not mad about it.
kmhst25's review against another edition
challenging
informative
3.0
Many non-fiction books seem to think they need a hook to get audiences to buy them (and maybe they do), but the hook is often slightly untrue, making the whole work feel like a marketing ploy. The hook here is THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. The author tells us in the first couple of sentences that life on Earth will almost definitely end when the sun burns us all up in about 5 billion years. But the book is about the end of the universe, which will probably come later.
The problem is that she's constantly talking about the end of the universe as if it will affect any of us, as if it is a very important problem to solve, rather than a theoretical question that will have no impact on human life whatsoever. She then goes on to present 5 possible ends of the universe, some of which she admits are extremely, extremely unlikely, even as shes hypes them up as completely terrifying. The hook, therefore, is not particularly compelling (why should I care about the end of the universe if it comes after the end of all human life?) and also rather deceitful (most of these theories are simply ideas, with little or no real evidence to back them-- why would I be scared of a completely unbacked idea?).
That being said, I liked a lot of the background information provided about the Big Bang and the current lines of inquiry being pursued to learn more about physics and the universe. I do feel like I have a much firmer grasp on what astrophysics is and what it's trying to achieve, and the book is short so I didn't have to work particularly hard to gain that knowledge.
The problem is that she's constantly talking about the end of the universe as if it will affect any of us, as if it is a very important problem to solve, rather than a theoretical question that will have no impact on human life whatsoever. She then goes on to present 5 possible ends of the universe, some of which she admits are extremely, extremely unlikely, even as shes hypes them up as completely terrifying. The hook, therefore, is not particularly compelling (why should I care about the end of the universe if it comes after the end of all human life?) and also rather deceitful (most of these theories are simply ideas, with little or no real evidence to back them-- why would I be scared of a completely unbacked idea?).
That being said, I liked a lot of the background information provided about the Big Bang and the current lines of inquiry being pursued to learn more about physics and the universe. I do feel like I have a much firmer grasp on what astrophysics is and what it's trying to achieve, and the book is short so I didn't have to work particularly hard to gain that knowledge.
thetbrstack's review against another edition
4.0
Above all, read the footnotes in this witty, educational, and entertaining book of science.
danoreading's review against another edition
3.0
5 stars for writing, humor, and audio narration. 2.5 stars for my understanding of astrophysics.
bobmcbobson's review against another edition
2.0
Fascinating topic, but the writing just didn’t do it for me. I felt like it lacked the narrative punch of other books that popularize complex science, and thus I found it to be a slog, but YMMV.