A Brief History of Time

The one that started it all – at least the phenomenal interest in popular science books. Hawking’s media presence from Star Trek TNG to BT adverts does nothing to trivialize this remarkable book. It’s one of a very few books in this category that continues to fascinate despite the fact that much of its contents stretch the reader further than is usually expected in a book of this sort.

To be honest, this reviewer avoided the book for many years for two reasons.

The first, which really wasn’t justified, was that this was so much a book that ‘everyone is buying’ that it seemed the cool thing to do to avoid it altogether. If that was your excuse too, it has now had plenty of time to stop being trendy, so you’ve no excuse for not getting it.

The other reason it seemed worth avoiding was its reputation as a book that rivalled Joyce’s Ulysses as one that most people never managed to get through because, trendy though it was, it’s almost impenetrable. If this is your reason for avoiding the book – you (like me) were wrong. It simply isn’t true.

Hawking starts remarkably gently, and though some of the contents are baffling in the small scale, provided you accept the standard undergraduate approach of nodding wisely and continuing whether or not you understand the fine detail, you will find that it fills in nicely with only a few gaps left.

I think this reputation itself reflects the way this book started a trend. The fact is, in modern popular science terms, while not an easy read, it’s quite acceptable – in fact just at the right level. If there’s one small doubt it’s the suspicion that the few autobiographical comments, interesting though they are, are thrown in at the instance of an editor saying ‘put something in about yourself, Stephen, that’ll keep them going.’

The fact remains that this book deserves its place on every popular science shelf, not as a trophy or an icon, but as a fascinating, enjoyable read.

Annotation

This landmark volume in scientific writing leads us on an exhilarating journey to distant galaxies, black holes, and alternate dimensions, and includes Professor Hawking’s observations about the last decade’s advances — developments that have confirmed many of his theoretical predictions. Makes vividly clear how Professor Hawking’s work has transformed our view of the universe.

From the Publisher

In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking’s classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking’s theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe’s beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel, and updated the chapters throughout.

Synopsis

This landmark volume in scientific writing leads us on an exhilarating journey to distant galaxies, black holes, and alternate dimensions, and includes Professor Hawking’s observations about the last decade’s advances—developments that have confirmed many of his theoretical predictions. Makes vividly clear how Professor Hawking’s work has transformed our view of the universe.

From The Critics

Publishers Weekly
Hawking’s discovery that black holes emit particles caused great excitement among astronomers. In this succinct overview of current theories of the cosmos, the Cambridge University physicist modestly weaves in his own notable contributions while giving due credit to his colleagues. He explains why relativity implies that a “big bang” occurred and examines string theory, which posits a universe of 10 or 26 dimensions. His understanding of time’s flow leads him to conclude that intelligent beings can only exist during the expansion phase of our increasingly chaotic universe. New research on black holes and subatomic particles holds implications for scientists who, like Hawking, are attempting to devise a unified theory linking Einstein to quantum mechanics. The merit of this book is Hawking’s ability to make these ideas graspable by the lay reader. (April)

Library Journal
A central question underlies this brief but crystal-clear account of the history of physical speculation about the universe: does the universe always operate in the same manner or does it allow for divergence? That the universe is static, as once thought, eventually proved impossible to reconcile with evidence from astronomy, for how could an expanding universe follow unchanging laws of nature? Hawking, along with mathematician Roger Penrose, discovered the answer: relativity theory not only allows, but requires, a big bang. The discussion does not end therethe universe may really be static, the “big bang” being local history in only a part of the universebut once again Hawking has proved himself a pioneer. David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., Ohio

A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes
with introduction by Carl Sagan
Bantam Books, 1988
ISBN: 055305340X