Sunday 28 January 2018

Week 5: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking


Stephen W. Hawking. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, 1988.

This is a re-read, but I read it while I was living in Sheffield—that’s late last millennium, so I can count it for the challenge.


I'm struggling to put pen to paper with this one. The man is a genius—one of the most important physicists of our, or any other time. The book is an important attempt to bring at least a basic understanding of a number of important developments in physics to the lay person. Yet I find it rather unsatisfying.


The science, at the level presented, isn’t particularly difficult (at least for some definition of difficult—although it wasn’t my speciality, I have done some introductory undergraduate physics, albeit many, many years ago, which gives me a bit of a head start), although you do have to spend some time thinking about the concepts.

It’s more that the author is so far beyond we mere mortals, and he struggles to connect with us, the prose coming across as stilted and at times rather forced. This was reinforced because I’d recently re-read In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin (although old, it’a still an excellent introduction to quantum physics), and the contrast between the writing styles is dramatic.

It's not a bad book, and it's certainly one that will exercise the brain cells, but the prose doesn’t read as easily as it might.

And now that I’m somewaht ahead of the game, time to tackle a weightier tome: Cervantes is next.

Stats to Date


Books Read: 6

Books by Male Authors: 3
Books by Female Authors: 3

Books by Australian Authors: 2

Fiction Books: 4
    Genre Books: 1

Verity Books: 2
    Literature Books: 1
    Science Books: 1

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