Customer Reviews
Very difficult to read - By: Voracious, 13 Jun 2008 
The introduction to each of the chapters have some very interesting ideas. However, this book would be very difficult for even an intelligent layman who has not had a background in Physics. Therefore, not reallly for the general reader.
Well worth reading - By: dr chris wallace, 29 Nov 2000 
...This book strives to answer "unanswerable" questions, & succeeds admirably. This is NOT a textbook, but fascinating fodder for the intelligent layman. I enjoyed it thoroughly, & would recommend it highly.
A possibly interesting debate, spoilt by inaccuracies. - By: , 09 Dec 1999 
Any popular science book MUST be accurate & not hide serious scientific controversies; if this rule is not followed the book-buying public is being misled. Apart from the elementary, undergraduate level errors in thermodynamics,(e.g. the first law of thermodynamics on page 24 is NOT the first law, nor is it a combination of the first & second laws due to a sign error; the Helmholtz free energy on page 50 is NOT the Helmholtz free energy again due to a sign error),the statement on page 135 that alll Einstein needed not to go fishing after 1925 was 'Stephen's discovery, fifty-five years later, of black hole radiation', might be felt by some offensive! Hawking's great surprise, on page 43, that black hole radiation emission was exactly thermal with a temperature derived from the Bekenstein-Hawking expression for black hole entropy in terms of the area of the horizon is dubious because it has to correspond to the entropy of black body radiation, which it doesn't. It should be noted also that, as has been pointed out on several occasions, the above-mentioned Bekenstein-Hawking entropy expression is itself dubious because it leads to possible violations of the second law of thermodynamics. The above are merely examples which certainly raise grave doubts concerning the worth of this book as a serious contribution to popular scientific literature.
