The Illustrated Brief History of Time, Updated and Expanded Edition

An informative book for the amateur who has an interest in astrophysics.

For anyone looking for a great, comprehensible explanation of the current state of the theories driving today's physics, this is it. Hawking has taken everything from the early history of thinking about the universe, its laws and composition, to the latest developments on black holes and string theory and placed it in a remarkably lucid set of explanations that detail the concepts behind all the mathematics that is so intimidating to most. This book is written without a single equation or a single statement on the order of "From the above, it is obvious that..." Instead, we proceed from the (comparatively) simple concepts about the everyday observable world of gravity, planets, and stars, travel carefully along the historical path of scientific observations as they modify and enhance the simple theories till we reach the world of quantum mechanics, the big bang, wormholes, and Grand Unified Field Theories. Each concept is fully explained, and with this expanded second edition, many of the concepts are beautifully illustrated with drawings and photographs. And, possibly surprising to some people, as we enter the rarified air of today's theories, we see that the line between physics and philosophy is a very thin one, and ruminations about the origin of the Universe lead to discussions about God and fate. Here we see why Hawking is one of the premier physicists of today, as he obviously thinks in same kind of conceptual language that this book is written in, capable of looking at the meaning behind the mathematics and how it relates to us as humans. Physics students and engineers may not find very much new here, but even they may benefit from the clear thought lines presented here, forcing a look at the meaning behind all the esoteric symbols that are their everyday working fare. About the only quibble I had with this was Hawking's insistence on writing out very large/small numbers as million-million-million... While this was fine the first couple of times it becomes a little irritating in place of the standard 1,000,000... representation, or even better to use standard scientific notation. A great elucidation of some of the most complex theories of the day, theories seemingly unrelated to your everyday life, but which are in fact the bedrock upon which today's technological marvels are based, and with implications that catch the nether regions of religion and the questions we all have about the meaning of life and the universe.

Book in extremely good condition. Looks totally new and better than described

I love watching podcasts on youtube about Physics and space. I decided to purchase this book as it has great reviews, and it did not disappoint! One thing I loved about this book is the visuals/images on each page (see attached a few examples). It really made it easy to understand these very complex ideas. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, regardless of previous knowledge, who has an interest in Physics.

Beautiful book!

As Hawking confesses, this is one of those Physics books which will try to explain you everything without feeding you real meat or printing single equation (i.e., except E=MC2). So the result is that after reading this book you would start believing that somebody taught you Chinese but apparently you can't write a single letter in Chinese. I bought the book simply because I think Hawking is probably the closest in living people who can sit next to Einstein and Newton. The way it starts is really engaging. Illustrations and those full color images are absolutely fantastic. The way the book goes is to take you on the journey to just few microseconds after the big bang to few minutes after. The most interesting part of the book is the discussions and disputes about singularity. I guess that alone (or just that, depending on your view) is worth the price of the book. It's written with lots of passion, clever remarks and it will make you think. But soon enough you will realize you are a helpless being quickly descending in the muddy quicksand. As the chapter passes by, the topics get increasingly fuzzy and extremely confusing. I won't blame the author as the publisher didn't allow him to put "real meat" in his writings. These kind of advanced topics are inherently difficult to understand without presenting actual equations and dealing with guts and gore. I read the later parts of the book 3 times trying to make sense of it and finally came to a conclusion that it is impossible to extract a logical meaning of that part of text, even though it's syntactically correct. So buy this book to get some first hand insights in to singularity and dive in to black holes, but save your time by skipping later chapters.

Well written in language that a novice can understand. It is comprehensive with the knowledge available at the time. Great illustrations to help understand the topics; better than any physics science book for the classroom. It is an enjoyable read an learning experience.

This is an amazing book. Hawking walks you through the evolution of philosophy and theories from the ground up. This is not a singularly-focused book either. In the beginning pages you delve into the history of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, then are soon brought to topics such as the Big Bang theory, quantum theory, and time travel! In my opinion, it is a book that the layman can read to get a third-person understanding of the scientific marvels of our day and the history of many theories throughout the past. The explanations used may become foggy as one inexperienced in physics and science tries to comprehend what is being said, but that is to be expected from a book that delves into what this one does. If you’re yearning to solve physics problems like in a classroom, rigorously calculating how long it takes for a pizza slice to fall into the ground, I’m afraid this book would likely not suit your immediate interests in that way. For that, I’d recommend a book such as Young & Freedman’s “University Physics.” However, if you’re looking to peer into the world of scientific theories of ones such as Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, and, of course, Hawking himself, I can very strongly recommend this book.

The book is very nice,and have detail information about space-time, universe,quantum physics and many more. I love this book. Delivery was on time. Thanks Amazon.

A perfect option for a gift. The narration is extremely easy to follow, the illustrations help a lot to understand the physical concepts described. A slightly bit outdated, yes, but on everything in physics up to 20th century is extremely accurate. Una opción perfecta para un regalo. La narración es muy fácil de seguir, las ilustraciones ayudan mucho a entender los conceptos físicos descritos. Un poco poco anticuado, sí, pero sobre todo en la física hasta siglo 20 es extremadamente precisa.

La calidad es muy buena en impresión y encuadernado, había visto algunas ediciones con relieve en la pasta pero esta sólo lo tiene en el lomo, llegó en buenas condiciones. En general bonito. El contenido es obviamente excelente.

It's an amazing book. Stephen Hawking is a remarkable personality who thrives for knowledge to understand how our Universe is built, why are we here and where did we come from.He is not only a brilliant scientist but a philosopher who strongly believes that we've been given an opportunity to explore the World around us and try to read the language of Nature. The content of the book will challenge our very perception of the surrounding world, how we see objects, our sense of time. It will show how huge (or small), complex and beautiful is our Universe, how much progress the mankind have done in revealing it's secrets and there is still a long way to discover it all. It's a short book but be prepared to re-read every page, so you understand better what S.Hawking is trying to explain there. All those complex ideas he put for us in a simplest possible way with nice illustrations, with no mathematical formulas or scary geometrical drawings. If you want to get a sense of how far we've got with understanding of our World, have a light touch of a matter the top physicists of the world are dealing with every day, if you want to bug your mind with even more questions (but questions will become more interesting, more advanced), then this book is for you.

I've had this book for a while now. it's probably, and indead almost hopefully out of date. by which i mean i hope new discoveries by either hawking or his eminent fellows of made this book defunct. Because otherwise this is the fundemental guide to our universe (Or at least our conception of it), say what you will about hawking, his book provides perhaps the most basic, digestible view of our universe ever published. no maths, no graphs just the concept based on what people who've spent a life time of study know. it's a really great book. Most importantly, the 'illustrations' make the concepts the book explains utterly clear, which is what makes the books so perfect. There are no doubt books that define our observed universe in more detail or through more accurate details but with that comes a cost, a cost in basic understanding. 'A Breif History of time' might not thoroughly explain the 'how' of the universe in mechanical detail but it does paint the broadest fullest picture of concepts and ideas otherwise limited to the wonderfully clever scientific elite. good book this.