This book written in 1988 by Steven Hawking was surprisingly quite enjoyable! I learned soo much and still was incredibly fascinated. People would look at the book and go "oh wow, black holes, Quantum mechanics, astro-physics... Uhm is that for school? There is no way you are reading that for fun." But I was really liking it. I wanted to read it after having numerous conversations with my roommate and his cousin about black holes and space-time, and although I could gather and even add a couple things here and there in the conversation, I felt like I wasn't grasping the theories. I'm still no professor, but I feel informed.
The book is laid out in such a way that if you just put even a small amount of effort in absorbing information, you actually feel you understand it. Yes even me, who took algebra 1 twice could start to grasp quantum mechanics, black holes, worm holes, and even thinking about the 4th dimension(of course I learned about the concepts, not the math!)
I read updated/tenth anniversary edition of the book and it is broken down into twelve chapters:
One- Our Picture of the Universe
Two- Space and Time
Three- The Expanding Universe
Four- The Uncertainty Principle
Five- Elementary Particles and the Forces of Nature
Six- Black Holes
Seven- Black Holes Ain't So Black
Eight- The Origin and Fate of the Universe
Nine- The Arrow of Time
Ten- Wormholes and Time Travel
Eleven- The Unification of Physics
Twelve- Conclusion
I think you should get used to me saying this, but everyone should at least glance at this book. It is not too difficult of a book to read, and Hawking does an amazing job at making sure an average person can understand some of the most complicated things in the universe! A really cool read, I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up. I only wish I had read it sooner.
Total Pages Read: 617