Brief History of Time

As an adamant fan of astrophysics and all things cosmos, I got sucked into the proverbial black hole that Stephen Hawking had created with the book A Brief History of Time. However, fairly early in the book, I nodded to myself, agreeing with the consensus that the book can be a challenge to people without a physics or cosmology background. Trying to conceptualize imaginary time on top of hearing about imaginary numbers for the first time may be overwhelming for some people.

Stephen Hawking wrote the book for the general, non-technical audience. Be that as it may, I found that the concept and theory explanations are inconsistent in their delivery, as if there were missing pages sometimes. Things like geodesics and great circles are accompanied by illustrations, whereas the reader is left to imagine concepts such as imaginary numbers and imaginary time.

The first edition got released in 1988, so the book has had a long time to build its legacy. Along with that legacy also come the discoveries and phenomena that were theorized or observed indirectly back then. Gravitational waves, for example, were first directly observed only in 2015 by LIGO. It is possible to trip over the facts that are no longer entirely true today. The book explores the scenarios in which the Universe is contracting, expanding, or static. However, in 1998, ten years after the first edition came out, it was discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Unfortunately, this fact is only mentioned in the book's appendix (I read the 2016 edition).

Overall, do not expect an easy read. A Brief History of Time will leave a lasting impression if you're willing to dedicate quality time to it. The book is slightly dated in its original form, and you are required to read the appendix to stay true to the facts.

A classic. And you don't need to be a science geek to love it.

It was fine. Not as engaging as I expected and I definitely didn't listen closely enough to follow all the scientist names he used casually. In hindsight I probably should have read this one vs audio.

paraphrasing Einstein, I declare that time must slow down under the pull of complex physics.

paraphrasing Heisenberg, i hereby declare that you cannot explain complex concepts concisely and clearly at the same time.

Maybe if you know these topics reasonably well you can enjoy a cursory review in a 6-hour stroll (which is what happened to me for the concepts I was already familiar with), but if you want to understand them for the first (or second) time, a ‘brief history' won't do. You end up reading paragraphs like this, shrugging, and moving on:

Four years later, a possible solution, called “supergravity,” was suggested. The idea was to combine the spin-2 particle called the graviton, which carries the gravitational force, with certain other particles of spin 3/2, 1, ½, and 0. In a sense, all these particles could then be regarded as different aspects of the same “superparticle,” thus unifying the matter particles with spin ½ and 3/2 with the force-carrying particles of spin 0, 1, and 2. The virtual particle/antiparticle pairs of spin ½ and 3/2 would have negative energy, and so would tend to cancel out the positive energy of the spin 2, 1, and 0 virtual pairs. This would cause many of the possible infinities to cancel out, but it was suspected that some infinities might still remain.

“Well, what should I read?” you say. I recommend Carroll, Susskind, Great Courses, biographies of Einstein, Dirac, von Neumann, Feynman. “But it takes time!” you object. Well, QED

3.25
It is well written but I struggle to see how people in 1988 - when this book was originally published - when there was no internet and no surge in interest in astrophics after The Big Bang Theory show, would find this in any way easy to keep up with. Some questions he proposed were ambiguous, some ideas were hard to keep up with, and it was hard to fall into a flow in this book, but as I said, it is well written and well put together regardless, hence the rating.

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3.5/5 stars

I just finished a chemistry class and it was really interesting to read this as it details scientific information that detail the fields of chemistry and physics. Stephen Hawking does a great job making the concepts of such a large, complicated field seem approachable and easier to understand. I loved comparing what I learned in my chemistry class with what the book discussed, as almost everything was the same, except for the advances in sciences, so it was fun to see those differences.

I also found in incredibly interesting how Hawking was interested (at least in this book, I know nothing of his life or beliefs) in how science and God mix.

Very interesting read.

Interesting but way too complicated, one needs a very good understanding of physics to really enjoy this book.

Short, dense and interesting. Besides, how can you resist a book that talks about virtual particles in imaginary time?

After watching A Theory of Everything, I was compelled to read Mr. Hawking's book.

I have never studied physics. Whatever knowledge I had of space and time comes from early high school, but mostly gradeschool. I've heard of Einstein, and Galileo. I've seen science fiction films, but the theme has never really interested me. It always seemed too technical and even mathematical.

Mr. Hawking does a good job explaining these complicated topics in a way for intermediates to understand. You must have a basic knowledge of science, and also have an extensive vocabulary. Mr. Hawking tries to break the topics down as best as he can, however there were still times I was completely lost.

I was surprised to find pieces of Mr. Hawking's humor shining through the book. they are small remarks, but it was a nice addition to a heavy subject matter. My favorite section were his two chapters on black holes. Mr. Hawking studied them for years. his passion and excitement seems to bleed onto the pages. It is due to those two chapters that I'm interested in reading more about his research.

I would recommend this to others, but with the disclaimer that it needs your full attention. If you're multitasking you're wasting your time. It's a relatively short book and can be finished in a day if one is really dedicated.

I'm sure I missed some key facts in the book, but I feel better after reading it. I feel smarter. I feel like Mr. Hawking has shared part of his knowledge with me. It's as if I was listeneing to one of his lectures. I've been given insight into the mind of a genius. I didn't understand everything but I've come out more intelligent than when I went in.

Good, fascinating book. What was confusing at times is that simple concepts were explained (“an ellipsis is an elongated circle”) and other much harder topics were somewhat glanced over. Nonetheless, I had fun reading.

Not really an interesting or relevant read for the average person. Though the book is relatively short, it is not as brief as it promises, filled instead with a lot of tertiary information to the history of the Universe. Additionally, a lot of complex theoretical Physics is introduced. Though the descriptions are simplified, the concepts are still not terribly accessible. Would not recommend this book to anyone and will not retain much of it.

Not nearly as good as The Fabric of the Cosmos, but still a good overview of time, space and the thinkers who've begun to untangled them.