A must read for anyone who has any interest in how or why the Universe around us is what it is. Don’t even bother picking this up if a question along the lines of “how did the Universe come to exist” does not cross your mind on a semi-regular basis, because I can assure you that you won’t make it even halfway through.
This book gave me a real appreciation, and what I would say is an admirable high level understanding of general relativity and quantum physics. These concepts are underlined and reiterated so often, that by the end of the book, the classical newtonian physics we were taught in high school almost feels like a joke and a mockery to “real” Physics; though Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica still stands as one of the most important scientific publication of all time. It provides enough context to sustain a conversation with a professional in the field of physics, to watch videos presented by today’s leaders in this field, or to even pursue a more technical reading if this book did not quench your hunger for knowledge.
While Hawking did a great in consolidating various principles and theories into a structured novel, he has a tendency to slide off on a tangent every so often. And while these tangents could be entertaining when they are anecdotal, they sometimes cause you to lose focus and understanding of the subject at hand. There’s a lot of jumping back and forth and referencing between different chapters as he is clearly trying show how all the different concepts fit into a single greater picture, but this approach is not effective the whole way through. While most of explanations are full of pithy, and he only expounds on certain points when necessary, using very straightforward analogies, there were a couple moments where Hawking skimmed over a pretty difficult concept and assumed that the reader had a full understanding of it moving forward.
Though I do come from a technical engineering background, the lack of math in this book is very comforting. I loved learning philosophical theories just as the anthropic principles, and about qualitative observations such as Feynman’s rules. However, being able to understand the Chandrasekhar limit, and what differentiates a white dwarf, neutron star and a black whole without delving into the math was what this book was made for. Knowing that the final structure of a black whole is SOLELY dependent on the original planet’s mass and rotation was almost euphoric. Trying to understand the idea of dark matter, antiparticles, and negative energy was a great thought experiment as well, though it is something I would like to revisit at some point in the future. Stephen hawking knew exactly what this book should contain, and how much detail it should have, and for that I admire him.
There were a couple chapters I had to reread because halfway through because they flew over my head the first time, so I can safely say that this is one of the few books I may need to read more than twice.