Product Description

One of the most influential thinkers of our time, Stephen Hawking is an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but for the clarity and wit with which he expresses them. His bestseller "A Brief History of Time" introduced the fascinating world of theoretical physics to readers all over the world. Now, Hawking turns to the major breakthroughs that have occurred in the years since the release of his first book. He brings to us the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stranger than fiction, and explains in layman's terms the principles that control our universe. Like many in the international scientific community, Professor Hawking is seeking to uncover the grail of science - the elusive "Theory of Everything" that lies at the heart of the cosmos. In "The Universe in a Nutshell", he guides us on his search to uncover the secrets of the universe - from supergravity to supersymmetry, from quantum theory to M-theory, from holography to duality. In this exciting intellectual adventure he seeks "to combine Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe". He takes us to the wild frontiers of science where superstring theory and p-branes may hold the final clue to the puzzle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4132 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 222 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Universe in a Nutshell attempts to address the relative difficulty of Hawking's first foray into popular science, A Brief History of Time. While this sold in its millions, few readers got past the first few chapters. Helpfully, this new work is full of beautifully prepared colour illustrations and decorations, and has a "tree-like" 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. It's a colossal venture--one Hawking is uniquely qualified to undertake--but it is crammed into far too small a space. When you consider the other rather good tomes being written on the nature of consciousness these days, the decision to limit The Universe in a Nutshell to the dictates of publishing rather than to the natural parameters of the material is an unfortunate one.

Worse, Hawking tries to paper over the complexity of his field. He rushes over the very concepts he should be helping us understand, only to belabour simple ideas, often by means of flip Star Trek metaphors. Also unfortunately, the illustrations--by turns trivial and opaque--mirror the faults of the text. The author's name alone will guarantee sales, but the book we long for--the long, ruminative, poetic celebration of Hawking's world--seems as far away as ever. --Simon Ings

Review
A Brief History of Time has now sold an estimated nine million copies worldwide - something of a hard act for its author to follow. In what is being promoted as the 'sequel' to that book, Professor Hawking gives an account of his attempt to combine Einstein's Theory of Relativity with Richard Feynman's idea of multiple histories, in order to reach the grail of a Theory of Everything - or big TOE, as it's charmingly named. This is a book about superstrings and p-branes, holography and supergravity, about how the 'cosmic seed' from which our universe derived was as small as a nut. The publishers are not yet releasing much text, but enough to see that it will be a fascinating (if challenging) read. And one enhanced throughout with 200 striking full colour illustrations and jazzed-up diagrams.

The Spectator
'The publishing sensation of the last decade'

Customer Reviews

An enjoyable but challenging book
This is the long-awaited follow-up to "A Brief History of Time". It's quite amazing how some of the ideas around the Physics of the very large and very small have developed in recent years, and Stephen Hawking is determined to communicate them to us.

He realises that this requires diagrams and analogies, since the mathematics is getting ever more forbidding. As a result, unlike a lot of books on modern Physics and cosmology, this one focuses on pictures and spatial representations. It's beautifully illustrated throughout, almost a coffee-table book. That said, Hawking hasn't neglected the text either - it's clear, concise and frequently humourous.

The book starts with the key ideas developed in the earlier part of the 20th century, Relativity and Quantum Theory, but in the context of more recent experiments and observations, which makes it feel more contemporary than more historical accounts. The second chapter explains how these developed through to the 1980s, summarising the various attempts at unified "Theories of Everything". The book's central chapter investigates what we now know about how the Universe formed and developed, presenting a lot of quite new findings and concepts.

After this, the going starts to get harder, introducing concepts like time travel through black holes, and the physics of the strangely-named "p-branes". You may need to read these several times, and understanding is by no means guaranteed, but Hawking rightly focuses on the key implications rather than the models themselves.

The penultimate chapter is a bit of a non-sequiteur, looking at the evolution of human and artificial intelligence. It's a fascinating subject, well described and clearly of great interest to Hawking, but doesn't quite fit with the rest of the book. Finally, the book presents some of the most recent ideas of unified theories - branes again - and makes some sense of why such strange mathematical models are needed.

I enjoyed this book, but I wouldn't pretend to have understood it all on a first reading. However, I understood enough to be convinced that Hawking is not only one of our time's great scientists but also, despite his disabilities, one of science's great explainers. If you're at all interested in modern Physics, I recommend this book...

Nutshells need Nutcrackers....
in this colourful book.
Hawking attempts to correct his heavily linguistic approach of 'a brief history' in a well thought-out attempt at presenting a more coherent image of our universe and our current level of understanding of it. In order to achieve this Hawking quickly guides the reader through some of the complex theories using careful and well-thought out language and cartoons and graphics that support the text along with reasonable summaries of the main findings. He is also keen to point out and highlight the relevance of each area in our overall understanding of the universe.
Many of these concepts are however, despite Hawkins best intentions difficult and abstract being very different from the normal classical experience of humans living in the macroscopic world. Quantum theory, P-Branes, Spin Theory, Sum of Histories, string theory are all dealt with here. Hawking avoids the use of Mathematics in explaining these concepts but it is still inevitable that some of the theories and concepts are not suited to this light approach - often complicated points that require more background comprehension in the subject remain difficult to comprehend. Occasionally one is left puzzled by abstract sections that are not well supported in the rest of the book.
However not delving too much into any one branch or area -does have its advantages; conscieness keeps the various branches connected and allow Hawkings overall image of the universe to form in the readers consciousness. This together with Hawkins frequent good humour also appear to capture the most important aspects of each area. If one can subdue the frustration of not fully comprehending some sections and trust to Hawkings guidance, one is carefully guided to a current cosmological understanding of the universe. Hawking seems to be generously aware of the difficulty in comprehending some of the abstract theories dealt lightly by him in the text and offers the reader a reading list at the end including a section on 'getting more technical'.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining an overview and powerful insight to the current shape of the universe. Hawking covers well the many theories and concepts that are pre-requisites for the more recent discoveries and Hawking brings his own valuable insight and guidance to these without becoming too bogged down in technical detail.
An excellent starting point too for anyone interested in finding some answers to some of the more fundamental questions asked by humans.

A great book, in theory
Hawking has achieved a cult status and popular appeal which few could have guessed was possible given his subject matter of theoretical physics. It is no small achievement that he has made such vast theoretical complexity accessible to a wide public: he stands as one of a handful of scientists who have pioneered the communication of science to a mass audience. Not only has his pure science transformed intellectual life, his writing skill has transformed public knowledge ... and I'm really not sure which is the greater achievement.

Hawking, in his best-selling "A Brief History of Time", introduced the lay reader to the big questions in science - where did we come from, why are we here, what is the meaning of life. He answered with an optimism and a passionate belief that science ... or Science ... was on the verge of the big break through. Sometime, in the next few years, it would discover the answer, and we would all sit back and go, "Ohhhh".

Unfortunately, this universal theory of everything has not materialised ... and there are many in the scientific community who would argue that it is now less likely we will discover the meaning of life than it was when Hawking first wrote his "Brief History of Time".

In the meantime, we have M-Theory, which tries to fill in the gaps. Hawking delivers an excellent explanation and exploration, but a number of critics have insisted his account is a bit sparse in places ... that the theory doesn't quite mesh together.

"The Universe in a Nutshell" is, therefore, and somewhat ironically, your starter for ten. Hawking's direct, economical style will capture your interest and your enthusiasm. You will enjoy the lavish illustrations and be engrossed by the man's capacity to reason and argue. But you may also decide you'd like to read more. If Hawking can induce you to keep searching, he will have done you a service and proved what a master communicator he is.