The Illustrated A Brief History of Time

Now here's a review I never thought I'd post:  Stephen Hawking's The Illustrated A Brief History of Time (#588).  Probably like most people since this book first appeared in 1988, I've had it on my "To Read" list, but somehow I could never quite actually picture myself reading a text book about physics!  So what got me off the couch and into the library?  Stephen Hawking's series earlier this year on PBS - Genius.  Each of the six episodes featured three ordinary folks who are given a topic and sets of materials to create experiments to explore that topic - time travel, the distances between the planets, etc.  These proved to be so interesting and enlightening that for the first time, I felt I could grasp some of the concepts that always seemed to be beyond my reach before.  So I decided it was time to read Professor Hawking's book.


Although the original, A Brief History of Time came out in 1988, our library had a copy of The Illustrated A Brief History of Time.  It came out in 1996, and is amended and updated to reflect changes and discoveries that had occurred following the publication of the first edition.  If you're not a scientist yourself, I would highly recommend sticking to this updated version.  As Professor Hawking himself noted in the book, even if you just look at the illustrations and photos, and read the captions, you'll have a grasp of what the book explains.  (Besides, I showed my husband some of the illustrations and they reminded us both strongly of pieces by glass artist Dale Chihuly, one of our favorites!)


There were several things that surprised me about this book: firstly, it is written in such a way that I could understand the concepts and how they should work, both theoretically and already proven.  Secondly,Hawking doesn't leave God out of the discussion - in fact there's even a photo of Hawking meeting Pope John Paul II after delivering a paper at a Vatican-convened conference of experts.  Most people in the scientific community these days seem determined to bar God from any equation.  Thirdly, this book made me laugh out loud several times.  That, I never expected! 


So many of the terms explained in this book have come into the language during my adult lifetime. The progress in the field has been so rapid, these terms have become ubiquitous in films, science fiction, and television - singularity, space time, event horizon, quarks, just to name a few.  We use them all the time without really being fully aware of what they actually mean.  I was watching an Olympic soccer match yesterday, and the announcer likened two opposing players to "black holes" and talked about the "gravitational force" of one player's kicks.  But trust me, I won't be laughing at the "in" jokes on Dr. Sheldon Cooper's white boards on The Big Bang Theory anytime soon!


This turned out to be an easy task to cross off my bucket list, and I feel smarter for having done it.  I'm just sorry I waited so long.