Share <Embed>

Buy New

$20.95

List Price: $27.99
Save: $7.04 (25%)

In stock on August 29, 2019.
Order it now.

Sold by ShelfYourself and Fulfilled by Amazon.

This item ships to Finland. Get it by Friday, Sept. 13 - Friday, Sept. 20 Choose this date at checkout. Learn more

Deliver to Finland

Buy Used

$9.95

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Deliver to Finland

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Turms

Fulfilled by Amazon

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$28.19
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: 7th Hill

Add to Cart

$28.20
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: PearlAngel

Add to Cart

$29.00
& FREE Shipping on eligible orders. Details

Sold by: BrandsBand

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

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

See this image

Follow the Author

Leonard Susskind

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics Hardcover – July 7, 2008

by Leonard Susskind (Author)

151 customer reviews

See all 20 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$8.85

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$20.95

$16.87

$2.97

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.59

$7.55

$1.49

MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$17.37

$18.81

Unknown Binding

"Please retry"

$27.85

$6.33

What happens when something is sucked into a black hole? Does it disappear? Three decades ago, a young physicist named Stephen Hawking claimed it did-and in doing so put at risk everything we know about physics and the fundamental laws of the universe. Most scientists didn't recognize the import of Hawking's claims, but Leonard Susskind and Gerard t'Hooft realized the threat, and responded with a counterattack that changed the course of physics. THE BLACK HOLE WAR is the thrilling story of their united effort to reconcile Hawking's revolutionary theories of black holes with their own sense of reality-effort that would eventually result in Hawking admitting he was wrong, paying up, and Susskind and t'Hooft realizing that our world is a hologram projected from the outer boundaries of space.
A brilliant book about modern physics, quantum mechanics, the fate of stars and the deep mysteries of black holes, Leonard Susskind's account of the Black Hole War is mind-bending and exhilarating reading.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Michio Kaku

215

Paperback
$13.80

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

Cosmology has been sexy since Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Hawking stormed onto the scene three decades ago, popularizing science for the masses. In The Black Hole War, Susskind plays on our insatiable appetite for the gee-whiz moment, combining lucid explanations for some complex ideas with stories that tend to confirm the eccentricities of the highly intelligent. In fact, it’s the author’s knack for teaching and his conversational prose that make the book accessible and therefore appealing to a wide audience. And, of course, it’s never a bad idea to drop Hawking’s name in a book’s title. “Susskind explains this dizzying notion about as clearly as is probably possible,” George Johnson writes of the author’s theory—even if, in the end, we need “a lot more data” (New York Times Book Review).
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

About the Author

Leonard Susskind has been the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1978. The author of The Cosmic Landscape, he is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (July 7, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316016403
ISBN-13: 978-0316016407
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 151 customer reviews

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

151 customer reviews

Review this product

Write a customer review

Showing 1-8 of 151 reviews

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

JFK

An amazing field to read about

October 15, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

An amazing field to read about, and an amazing book to read about it.

But be advised: this is not easy reading - in comparison, for example, to Bill Bryson's great book "A Short History of Nearly Everything," or even Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" or Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." It's not a starter book - but it is mind bending once you read the 'starter' books.

It's hard to describe how brilliant Leonard Susskind is. What dawned on him is Einsteinian.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Great physics reading

June 1, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Very interesting! Still I had difficulty accepting the idea of the Hawking radiation. If the radiation happens at the event horizon, that surface exists relative to an observer at infinite distance. I guess that a closer observer will see an event horizon that is slightly closer to the black hole. Since the even horizon is a particle-antiparticle splitter, how could it be so relative to an observer. Would the hawking radiation depend on the observer? The closer observer would see the infinite observed event horizon as ordinary space, an because of that virtual particles would not split and radiate. May be I am "not even wrong."

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Cook

Enjoyable and informative

August 6, 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Nice explanations of corners of physics that I hadn't read in other popular physics-related books. Some interesting personal stories of the physics community. An easy read of sometime-difficult ideas, aided by prolonged and useful metaphors. A bit long for the amount of content. Weak on the issue of magnitudes - for example: If a key disagreement concerns one alternative in which matter is annihilated in the heat at the boundary of a black hole, the author should first have made a prolonged argument to settle on a limited range of allowable temperatures that would be found at the boundary and the variables that would affect this temperature, as well as a prolonged explanation of why an observer passing through this boundary would not at that time experience this zone of high temperature; this is a foundation for at least the next hundred pages.

Helpful

Comment

Liam H Dooley

Black Hole Information Loss: You probably won't understand it all, but something is better than nothing

November 8, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I am not a physicist but, as an avid history and current events scholar and reader, I have a great interest in breaking out of my comfort zone from time to time. Physics is great because it is so devoid of human imperfection - except when we discuss the history of science.

This book is a bit of history of science - namely the debate of the issue of black holes and information loss - and a lot of physics theory. It necessarily starts from the beginning of basic relativity, nuclear physics, and thermodynamics. This part is the easiest to understand (being well covered in your average "popular" physics book), and takes up a solid half or more of the book. But that's ok...the theories are put into the context of black hole physics.

The last third or less of the book really dives into the most abstract part and the hardest to understand: dimensions, string theory, holograms, etc. I got 75% of the first half, and about 25% of the last half; with about 10% of the last few chapters. Susskind admits that these are hard issues to understand, and he did his level best to write it out. But he is basically trying to put words to numbers, which is well nigh impossible for this field.

I think the book's greatest fault is the subject; it's simply not (for me) a fascinating subject. Other books on multiverse, anti-matter, dark matter, and relativity are more interesting - perhaps because they are simply more tangible for my non-physics mind. But I learned something from this book, and feel a bit wiser for the effort.

Liam H Dooley
www.liamhdooley.com

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

J. C.

3.5 to 4 star

October 29, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book is not quite what it seems. It is a book more about the conversations and histories of the "Black Hole War" than the science behind the black hole war.

The book can be divded into 2 halves. The first half is the bascis of physics (entropy, gravity, relativity...etc) which would probably be hard to digest without some prior knowledge in physics. Then the author shifts gear towards the "war," but spent way too much time dissecting and redissecting the same concepts ad nauseum, while digressing way too frequently to irrevalent side stories/interviews that seem to serve no purpose than to take up pages. With better organization and editing, this book could have easily been 1/3 of its current size without loosing vital information.

But my biggest disappoint in this book is, while it does offer a number of insights into the current state of physics, the way he introduces concepts are at best haphazard - he frequently and abruptly does leaps of logic between concepts, and often doesn't fully explain the very concepts he set out to explain. And some concepts he basically just states "so and so did some calculation and found out what I said before is really true!" This is great for him but thats not exactly why I bought this book.

In the end, in trying to be do too many things at the same time, what could have been an otherwise incredibly insightful book into cutting edge science failed to live up to its true potential.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Jolly Jogger

Great book for getting a non-quantitative understanding of current issues in physics.

August 19, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

My BS in physics is over forty years old. This was a great way to catch up. I had forgotten that string theory was beginning to play a big role in nuclear physics. When the book pointed out some of the things that were well proven about it at the nuclear scale, it reduced my scepticism about all the mathematical hard labor being devoted to string theory in order to understand what is happening at much higher energies. As usual, physicist have looked at very simplified special cases in order to make the math tractable and clarify basic processes. The book explains many of these clearly. It is also a reminder that the most advanced human minds barely have the capacity to begin unravelling quantum mechanics and cosmology at their limits, and a lot more humility would probably be appropriate!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Pages with related products. See and discover other items: stephen hawking biography

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy

Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account	Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Handpicked Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources

Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go	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

CreateSpace Indie Print Publishing Made Easy	DPReview Digital Photography	East Dane Designer Men's Fashion	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities

IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital Publishing Made Easy	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing

Ring Smart Home Security Systems	eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Subscribe with Amazon Discover & try subscription services	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Second Chance Pass it on, trade it in, give it a second life

Buy New

$20.95

Buy Used

$9.95

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics Hardcover – July 7, 2008

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

About the Author

Product details

Related video shorts (0)

Be the first video

151 customer reviews

Review this product

Read reviews that mention

Showing 1-8 of 151 reviews

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

Buy New $20.95

Buy Used $9.95

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics Hardcover – July 7, 2008

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

About the Author

Product details

Related video shorts (0)

Be the first video

151 customer reviews

Review this product

Read reviews that mention

Showing 1-8 of 151 reviews

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

Buy New

$20.95

Buy Used

$9.95