Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery

List Price: $18.00 Details

Save: $8.01 (45%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Friday, August 4 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery Thursday, August 3. Order within 16 hrs 57 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$9.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery August 24 - 28 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery August 22 - 24

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by ZBK Wholesale

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$5.50
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Revolver Market

Added

Not added

$7.49
+ $4.85 shipping

Sold by: AllStarBooks57

Added

Not added

$7.99
+ $4.85 shipping

Sold by: Baby-Blooms

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 4 images

A Brief History of Time Paperback – Illustrated, September 1, 1998

by Stephen Hawking (Author)

4.7 4,870 ratings

in Cosmology

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

School & Library Binding

"Please retry"

$32.70

$15.43

Paperback, Illustrated

"Please retry"

$9.99

$5.50

$1.36

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$9.99","priceAmount":9.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"KEsYRUgmVo7ouORZolY3qG0XKQObErPceJSqe7TLBSLxMVtQmiQ3RvkS5pzRJDGPakAjYHFMNO3LrjgwIdYpIYoGyUFOaH%2BrZn1MiuByT5jDS4Ocf5CNq0uwHmv3I4i%2FYI6hS6M%2FqEk%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$7.56","priceAmount":7.56,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"7","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"56","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"KEsYRUgmVo7ouORZolY3qG0XKQObErPcE9DU895QYp6WtKqnqq7lkrHXlaEw9O3nWJXGi3NDz1uxh3gS%2FzYnG7Ixbfv42q%2BNflO5RwbI7%2F6I%2FDkkD%2FKkbH9bE1qW7FXSLtFj8C6mRkJAElBUgGk96UVjECFZ34DZiNngaon%2F0SN3M%2FCxc1Zz6tn23EsomU%2Bn","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.

Print length

212 pages
Language

English
Publication date

September 1, 1998
Dimensions

6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

9780553380163
ISBN-13

978-0553380163
Lexile measure

1290L
See all details

Frequently bought together

$9.99

Get it as soon as Friday, Aug 4

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

$9.99

Get it as soon as Friday, Aug 4

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Dover Books on Physics)

$8.76

Get it as soon as Friday, Aug 4

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
35,182
Hardcover
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
313 offers from $1.49
Stephen W Hawking
170
Paperback
9 offers from $10.98
Stephen Hawking
2,249
Hardcover
140 offers from $2.75
Carl Sagan
6,672
Paperback
114 offers from $3.01
Stephen Hawking
15,274
Hardcover
125 offers from $2.53
Kip Thorne
2,022
Paperback
in Film & Television
48 offers from $8.95

From the Publisher

Wall Street Journal says, “A masterful summary of what physicists now think the world is made of”

The New Yorker says, “Charming and lucid… A book of sunny brilliance.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Hawking] can explain the complexities of cosmological physics with an engaging combination of clarity and wit. . . . His is a brain of extraordinary power.”—The New York Review of Books

“This book marries a child’s wonder to a genius’s intellect. We journey into Hawking’s universe while marvelling at his mind.”—The Sunday Times (London)

“Masterful.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Charming and lucid . . . [A book of] sunny brilliance.”—The New Yorker

“Lively and provocative . . . Mr. Hawking clearly possesses a natural teacher’s gifts—easy, good-natured humor and an ability to illustrate highly complex propositions with analogies plucked from daily life.”—The New York Times

“Even as he sits helpless in his wheelchair, his mind seems to soar ever more brilliantly across the vastness of space and time to unlock the secrets of the universe.”—Time

From the Inside Flap

A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, was a landmark volume in science writing and in world-wide acclaim and popularity, with more than 9 million copies in print globally. The original edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the ensuing years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic world--observations that have confirmed many of Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book.

Now a decade later, this edition updates the chapters throughout to document those advances, and also includes an entirely new chapter on Wormholes and Time Travel and a new introduction. It make vividly clear why A Brief History of Time has transformed our view of the universe.

From the Back Cover

"A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, was a landmark volume in science writing and in world-wide acclaim and popularity, with more than 9 million copies in print globally. The original edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the ensuing years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic world--observations that have confirmed many of Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book.
Now a decade later, this edition updates the chapters throughout to document those advances, and also includes an entirely new chapter on Wormholes and Time Travel and a new introduction. It make vividly clear why "A Brief History of Time has transformed our view of the universe.

About the Author

Stephen Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years and the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His books for the general reader include My Brief History, the classic A Brief History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universes, The Universe in a Nutshell, and, with Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design. Stephen Hawking died in 2018.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Our picture of the universe

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Can we go back in time? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun–or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.

As long ago as 340 B.C. the Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book On the Heavens, was able to put forward two good arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round, which would be true only if the earth was spherical. If the earth had been a flat disk, the shadow would have elongated and elliptical, unless the eclipse always occurred at a time when the sun was directly under the center of the disk. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions. (Since the North Star lies over the North Pole, it appears to be directly above an observer at the North Pole, but to someone looking from the equator, it appears to lie just at the horizon. From the difference in the apparent position of the North Star in Egypt and Greece, Aristotle even quoted an estimate that the distance around the earth was 400,000 stadia. It is not known exactly what length a stadium was, but it may have been about 200 yards, which would make Aristotle’s estimate about twice the currently accepted figure. The Greeks even had a third argument that the earth must be round, for why else does one first see the sails of a ship coming over the horizon, and only later see the hull?

Aristotle thought the earth was stationary and that the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth. He believed this because he felt, for mystical reasons, that the earth was the center of the universe, and that circular motion was the most perfect. This idea was elaborated by Ptolemy in the second century A.D. into a complete cosmological model. The earth stood at the center, surrounded by eight spheres that carried the moon, the sun, the stars, and the five planets known at the time, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (Fig 1.1). The planets themselves moved on smaller circles attached to their respective spheres in order to account for their rather complicated observed paths in the sky. The outermost sphere carried the so-called fixed stars, which always stay in the same positions relative to each other but which rotate together across the sky. What lay beyond the last sphere was never made very clear, but it certainly was not part of mankind’s observable universe.

Ptolemy’s model provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting the positions of heavenly bodies in the sky. But in order to predict these positions correctly, Ptolemy had to make an assumption that the moon followed a path that sometimes brought it twice as close to the earth as at other times. And that meant that the moon ought sometimes to appear twice as big as at other times! Ptolemy recognized this flaw, but nevertheless his model was generally, although not universally, accepted. It was adopted by the Christian church as the picture of the universe that was in accordance with Scripture, for it had the great advantage that it left lots of room outside the sphere of fixed stars for heaven and hell.

A simpler model, however, was proposed in 1514 by a Polish priest, Nicholas Copernicus. (At first, perhaps for fear of being branded a heretic by his church, Copernicus circulated his model anonymously.) His idea was that the sun was stationary at the center and that the earth and the planets moved in circular orbits around the sun. Nearly a century passed before this idea was taken seriously. Then two astronomers–the German, Johannes Kepler, and the Italian, Galileo Galilei–started publicly to support the Copernican theory, despite the fact that the orbits it predicted did not quite match the ones observed. The death blow to the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theory came in 1609. In that year, Galileo started observing the night sky with a telescope, which had just been invented. When he looked at the planet Jupiter, Galileo found that it was accompanied by several small satellites or moons that orbited around it. This implied that everything did not have to orbit directly around the earth, as Aristotle and Ptolemy had thought. (It was, of course, still possible to believe that the earth was stationary at the center of the universe and that the moons of Jupiter moved on extremely complicated paths around the earth, giving the appearance that they orbited Jupiter. However, Copernicus’s theory was much simpler.) At the same time, Johannes Kepler had modified Copernicus’s theory, suggesting that the planets moved not in circles but in ellipses (an ellipse is an elongated circle). The predictions now finally matched the observations.

As far as Kepler was concerned, elliptical orbits were merely an ad hoc hypothesis, and a rather repugnant one at that, because ellipses were clearly less perfect than circles. Having discovered almost by accident that elliptical orbits fit the observations well, he could not reconcile them with his idea that the planets were made to orbit the sun by magnetic forces. An explanation was provided only much later, in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, probably the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences. In it Newton not only put forward a theory of how bodies move in space and time, but he also developed the complicated mathematics needed to analyze those motions. In addition, Newton postulated a law of universal gravitation according to which each body in the universe was attracted toward every other body by a force that was stronger the more massive the bodies and the closer they were to each other. It was this same force that caused objects to fall to the ground. (The story that Newton was inspired by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea of gravity came to him as he sat “in a contemplative mood” and “was occasioned by the fall of an apple.”) Newton went on to show that, according to his law, gravity causes the moon to move in an elliptical orbit around the earth and causes the earth and the planets to follow elliptical paths around the sun.

The Copernican model got rid of Ptolemy’s celestial spheres, and with them, the idea that the universe had a natural boundary. Since “fixed stars” did not appear to change their positions apart from a rotation across the sky caused by the earth spinning on its axis, it became natural to suppose that the fixed stars were objects like our sun but very much farther away.

Newton realized that, according to his theory of gravity, the stars should attract each other, so it seemed they could not remain essentially motionless. Would they not all fall together at some point? In a letter in 1691 to Richard Bentley, another leading thinker of his day, Newton argued that his would indeed happen if there were only a finite number of stars distributed over a finite region of space. But he reasoned that if, on the other hand, there were an infinite number of stars, distributed more or less uniformly over infinite space, this would not happen, because there would not be any central point for them to fall to.

This argument is an instance of the pitfalls that you can encounter in talking about infinity. In an infinite universe, every point can be regarded as the center, because every point has an infinite number of stars on each side of it. The correct approach, it was realized only much later, is to consider the finite situation, in which the stars all fall in on each other, and then to ask how things change if one adds more stars roughly uniformly distributed outside this region. According to Newton’s law, the extra stars would make no difference at all to the original ones on average, so the stars would fall in just as fast. We can add as many stars as we like, but they will still always collapse in on themselves. We now know it is impossible to have an infinite static model of the universe in which gravity is always attractive.

It is an interesting reflection on the general climate of thought before the twentieth century that no one had suggested that the universe was expanding or contracting. It was generally accepted that either the universe had existed forever in an unchanging state, or that it had been created at a finite time in the past more or less as we observe it today. In part this may have been due to people’s tendency to believe in eternal truths, as well as the comfort they found in the thought that even though they may grow old and die, the universe is eternal and unchanging.

Even those who realized that Newton’s theory of gravity showed that the universe could not be static did not think to suggest that it might be expanding. Instead, they attempted to modify the theory by making the gravitational force repulsive at very large distances. This did not significantly affect their predictions of the motions of the planets, but it allowed an infinite distribution of stars to remain in equilibrium–with the attractive forces between nearby stars balanced by the repulsive forces from those that were farther away. However, we now believe such an equilibrium would be unstable: if the stars in some region got only slightly nearer each other, the attractive forces between them would become stronger and dominate over the repulsive forces so that the stars would continue to fall toward each other. On the other hand, if the stars got a bit farther away from each other, the repulsive forces would dominate and drive them farther apart.

Another objection to an infinite static universe is normally ascribed to the German philosopher Heinrich Olbers, who wrote about this theory in 1823. In fact, various contemporaries of Newton had raised the problem, and the Olbers article was not even the first to contain plausible arguments against it. It was, however, the first to be widely noted. The difficulty is that in an infinite static universe nearly every line of sight would end on the surface of a star. Thus one would expect that the whole sky would be as bright as the sun, even at night. Olbers’s counterargument was that the light from distant stars would be dimmed by absorption by intervening matter. However, if that happened the intervening matter would eventually heat up until it glowed as brightly as the stars. The only way of avoiding the conclusion that the whole of the night sky should be as bright as the surface of the sun would be to assume that the stars had not been shining forever but had turned on at some finite time in the past. In that case the absorbing matter might not have heated up yet or the light from distant stars might not yet have reached us. And that brings us to the question of what could have caused the stars to have turned on in the first place.

The beginning of the universe had, of course, been discussed long before this. According to a number of early cosmologies and the Jewish/Christian/Muslim tradition, the universe started at a finite, and not very distant, time in the past. One argument for such a beginning was the feeling that it was necessary to have “First Cause” to explain the existence of the universe. (Within the universe, you always explained one event as being caused by some earlier event, but the existence of the universe itself could be explained in this way only if it had some beginning.) Another argument was put forward by St. Augustine in his book The City of God. He pointed out that civilization is progressing and we remember who performed this deed or developed that technique. Thus man, and so also perhaps the universe, could not have been around all that long. St. Augustine accepted a date of about 5000 B.C. for the Creation of the universe according to the book of Genesis. (It is interesting that this is not so far from the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 B.C., which is when archaeologists tell us that civilization really began.)

Aristotle, and most of the other Greek philosophers, on the other hand, did not like the idea of a creation because it smacked too much of divine intervention. They believed, therefore, that the human race and the world around it had existed, and would exist, forever. The ancients had already considered the argument about progress described above, and answered it by saying that there had been periodic floods or other disasters that repeatedly set the human race right back to the beginning of civilization.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0553380168
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; 10th Anniversary edition (September 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 212 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780553380163
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553380163
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1290L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Cosmology (Books)
- #2 in Relativity Physics (Books)
- #6 in Astronomy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 4,870 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

4,870 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all customer images

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Will Fry

Well Worth The Read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

A Brief History Of Time explores some of the basic questions of existence, such as: How did the universe come to be? What's going to happen to it? How does time work? The book covers the size and age of the universe, the beginning and end of it, black holes, various theories about time, and how the theory of general relativity fits in with the quest for a general theory of everything.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest minds of our time, Hawking's attempt to communicate complex science to the general public is written in a clear, almost elementary style, at least initially. (As more difficult concepts are introduced, the sentences become thicker, and the paragraphs longer.)

For example, when introducing the “uncertainty principle”, Hawking writes:

“The more accurately you try to measure the position of the particle, the less accurately you can measure its speed, and vice versa... Heisenberg’s uncertainly principle is a fundamental, inescapable property of the world.”

What I Liked Least About It

By far the most infuriating thing about this book was Hawking’s deliberate and repeated use of a non-standard way to communicate numbers. For example:

“The idea of inflation could also explain why there is so much matter in the universe. There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe we can observe. Where did they all come from?”

Nobody writes (or understands) numbers this way. The most common way to communicate large numbers in science writing is with scientific notation, something that’s common enough that the average person at least knows what you mean. Hawking could have saved quite a bit of space in the above paragraph by simply writing “10^80” (sorry, this text field won't accept superscripts), which is how any other writer would have handled it. Did he expect that repeating “million” fourteen times would somehow impress someone?

(Also, oddly enough, “ten” followed by fourteen instances of “million” would actually be one with eight-five zeroes after it, not eighty. So, it was not only a poor way to write the number, but inaccurate as well. It should have had “one hundred” with thirteen instances of “million”.)

A second thing that began to bug me was the gratuitous use of the word “God”, in places where it didn’t seem to belong. Knowing as I do that Hawking admitted in 2014 that he doesn’t believe in God (“I’m an atheist”), and that he most likely didn’t believe in God in 1988 when he inserted these phrases about God, it seems disingenuous and misleading. As late as 2007, he was still saying “the laws [of science] may have been decreed by God”, though some who have known him since the 1970s say he has been an atheist the entire time.

It’s not just a few mentions. The idea of God permeates this book. To be clear, I’m not complaining that he talks about God; nearly everyone I have ever known does that repeatedly. My complaint is that the talk of God seems wedged into the pages, even in places where it isn’t appropriate, despite the writer’s atheism. Here are two examples, the first using God in an appropriate manner, and the second not so much:

“Newton was very worried by this lack of absolute position, or absolute space, as it was called, because it did not accord with his idea of an absolute God. In fact, he refused to accept lack of absolute space, even though it was implied by his laws.”

“However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

Those are the final three sentences of the entire book. Later, in 2014, Hawking weakly tried to defend this phrasing: “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is we would know everything that God would know if there was a God, but there isn’t.” If that is what he meant, it is easy enough to say: “for then we would know what a god would know”. I can’t imagine anyone but a very small fringe of scientific-minded theists being pleased with his original wording.

What I Liked Most About It

Despite regular accusations from the anti-science crowd that “science is a religion” (example), I found no leaps of faith or baseless assertions in this book (or in any other science-related book I’ve read recently). Where something is unknown, the author said it’s unknown. If something is assumed, he said it is assumed, and explained why it’s assumed. Hawking even questions the very foundation of how science formulates theories. For example:

“It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go. Instead, we break the problem up into bits and invent a number of partial theories. Each of these partial theories describes and predicts a certain limited class of observations, neglecting the effects of other quantities, or representing them by simple sets of numbers. It may be that this approach is completely wrong. If everything in the universe depends on everything else in a fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation.”

This kind of language is exactly why I like science. It uses terms like “as far as we know”, “to the best of our knowledge”, “recent studies have shown”, “with a few exceptions, which I will mention below”, and so on. When contrasted with the firm language of religion (“absolute”, “always”, and “every”), it shows that science is a quest for knowledge rather than an assertion of it. Science tends to recognize what it doesn’t yet know; in fact, what isn’t known is the very reason for the existence of science.

Unlike the last book I reviewed, many of the ideas presented in this one did not make sense intuitively to me. Each of us grows up with an idea of the universe based on how it was first explained to us in our earliest days. It does not feel correct that the universe expanded out of an infinitely small point, or that it will someday contract back to that point — which is the most common scientific model of the universe. So when Hawking got to the point of explaining that it is possible, mathematically, for the universe to be finite without a singularity, I felt something like relief.

“It is possible for space-time to be finite in extent and yet to have no singularities that formed a boundary or edge. Space-time would be like the surface of the Earth, only with two more dimensions. The surface of the Earth is finite in extent, but it doesn’t have a boundary or edge... so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary.”

In fact, each time I was starting to feel lost, Hawking would add something that grounded me just a little.

Additional Note

One thing that surprised me in several places were the dates of the discoveries, when compared to the dates I went to school and what I was (or was not) taught. For example, Hawkings says that the idea of electrons orbiting nuclei like planets orbiting a sun was an idea from the “beginning” of the 20th Century, and that it was overturned not too long after. Yet I was taught the old orbiting theory in the 1980s.

He also mentions that quarks were discovered in the 1960s, and much more work was done on them in the 1970s. My science books in high school in the 1980s didn’t mention them. The proton, neutron, and electron were said to be the smallest indivisible particles known.

It was frustrating to read these dates and realize that I was taught material that was known at the time to be incorrect. I thought quarks were discovered in the 1990s, because that’s when I first heard about them.

Hawking addresses this problem somewhat later in the book, when he talks about the increased pace of scientific discovery:

“In Newton’s time it was possible for an educated person to have a grasp of the whole of human knowledge, at least in outline. But since then, the pace of the development of science has made this impossible. Because theories are always being changed to account for new observations, they are never properly digested or simplified so that ordinary people can understand them. You have to be a specialist, and even then you can only hope to have a proper grasp of a small proportion of the scientific theories. Further, the rate of progress is so rapid that what one learns at school or university is always a bit out of date.”

Conclusion

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in science in general, or especially cosmology. I will probably read it again in a few years, to see if I feel any differently about it then.

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Alen

A Cosmic Journey: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe on Your Bookshelf

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

"A Brief History of Time" by renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is a testament to the power of human curiosity and our relentless pursuit to understand the universe in which we live. This book brings the mysteries of space and time from the realm of the abstract into the hands of the everyday reader.

Hawking's genius lies not only in his profound understanding of cosmology but also in his ability to translate complex concepts into digestible prose. The book effortlessly walks you through theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, and the Big Bang Theory, among others. Each page unfolds with thrilling revelations about our universe, making it feel as if you're venturing into the farthest reaches of space right from your living room.

That said, the complexity of the topics discussed necessitates a level of concentration and intellectual curiosity from the reader. Some concepts may need to be revisited multiple times for complete understanding. This makes the book a continuous exploration rather than a one-time read.

Despite the challenges, the knowledge and perspective gained from "A Brief History of Time" make it a rewarding read. It invites us to reflect on our place in the cosmos and pushes us to contemplate the very nature of existence.

Ratings:

Readability: 7/10
Depth of Content: 9/10
Intellectual Stimulation: 10/10
Accessibility of Subject Matter: 8/10

Overall: 8.5/10 - A riveting journey through the cosmos that challenges, enlightens, and awakens the star-gazer in us all. Take a leap into the unknown with "A Brief History of Time".

Helpful

Peter

Should you read this book? Heck yes.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is undoubtedly one of the classic casual scientific texts one should read to be well aware of the world around them and how it came to be. The author, an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, seamlessly places the reader in the shoes of a student while diving deep into the questions we have always wondered but have never had the craving to research on our own time. Beginning with the relative basics of discoveries in the past centuries, Stephen Hawking explains in great detail the logic and reasoning behind the evolution of the human understanding of the universe. After getting the base knowledge out of the way, the book quickly dives deeper and deeper into theoretical possibilities and the observations which back them up. Due to the vagueness of the topic, the author helps readers visualize and truly understand the concepts that are being discussed with similes and analogies which relate to the real, observable world and the everyday life of the audience. When talking about the steps that must be taken for a star to transition into a black hole, Stephen Hawking connects the complex series of reasoning to a simple image, helping the reader visualize the theory: “It is a bit like a balloon---there is a balance between the pressure of the air inside, which is trying to make the balloon expand, and the tension of the rubber, which is trying to make the balloon smaller” (85). As a reader, such a vivid comparison makes the discussion of “sufficient gravitational attraction” seem a whole lot simpler and manageable to wrap your head around. Moreover, the lighthearted remarks which are tossed in throughout the text keeps you entertained and encourages you to continue reading, maybe not for the theories Hawking talks about but rather for his clever jokes which connect the material which was just discussed. During his discussion of elementary particles (matter and antimatter), the author includes a lighthearted remark which more or less summarizes the material that was just discussed: “However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light” (71). The passage before this comment became complicated and very confusing to follow, however, after reading that joke, I couldn’t help myself but to turn a few pages back and reread his theory – all of this to understand his clever remark.
Thus far, it seems like the perfect scientific book to read – it’s light, clever, and even funny at times. Yet, some parts of the text became extremely complex and impossible to follow. It didn’t help that the author expected the audience to have prior knowledge of the historical events which connect with the theories being discussed: “In fact bursts of gamma rays from space have been detected by satellites originally constructed to look for violations of the Test Ban Treaty” (115). While knowing exactly what the treaty was about is not directly necessary for a comprehension of the ideas in the book, it would undoubtedly be more helpful if a quick snippet of historical information was included in the text. The complexity of the theory’s descriptions, on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to do with the book itself. Stephen Hawking included an abundance of analogies and explained the complicated concepts of wormholes in as simple of language as possible. The issue is not with the author and the writing style – the subject itself makes it challenging to follow the ideas on the paper. If the idea of having to reread the same paragraph multiple times upsets you – A Brief History of Time is definitely not the book for you.
All in all this is an outstanding scientific text, a classic even. The depth of the material that is being discussed in a syntax which an average teenager can understand is unbelievable at times. This book will answer the questions (and raise just as many new ones) you always had about anything to do with universe topics which are never discussed with the general public So, should you read this book? Heck yes.

34 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

vincenzo p.

Sul tempo

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on July 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

Il libro e’ di mio particolare interesse. Non e’ detto che piaccia a tutti , pero’

Translate review to English

Mikey

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 19, 2023

Verified Purchase

I've been meaning to read this for ages and finally got round to it. It didn't disapoint.

Cliente Amazon

Buen libro

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on April 29, 2016

Verified Purchase

Explicado con ejemplos para que se entienda bien. Un gran libro clasico que te deja sin palabras. Muy interesante, sin duda.

Translate review to English

Franck

Bluffing

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on February 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

Stunning book for those who enjoy learning about the creation of our universe and various physics laws. It simply makes you wonder about us, about our surroundings and our place within History.
The book is sometimes very technical and may cause some headaches !!!

gazza

la scienza spiegata con semplicità

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on July 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

un libro eccezionale, fisica, astrofisica spiegata nel modo più semplice possibile cosa per niente facile. Certo qualche noione di fisica e matematica è necessaria in alcuni passaggi.
Da leggere

Translate review to English

See more reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account

Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	Amazon Fresh Groceries & More Right To Your Door	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Experienced Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Ignite Sell your original Digital Educational Resources	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Listen to Books & Original Audio Performances	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Box Office Mojo Find Movie Box Office Data	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics	DPReview Digital Photography	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting

Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy

Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Warehouse Great Deals on Quality Used Products	Whole Foods Market America’s Healthiest Grocery Store	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing	Ring Smart Home Security Systems

eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Blink Smart Security for Every Home	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Amazon Subscription Boxes Top subscription boxes – right to your door	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust

Amazon Prime includes:

Buy new: $9.99$9.99 FREE delivery: Friday, Aug 4 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $7.56

Other Sellers on Amazon

A Brief History of Time Paperback – Illustrated, September 1, 1998

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

More items to explore

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

Important information

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$9.99

FREE delivery: Friday, Aug 4 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$7.56