من أفضل وأهم الكتب التي قرأتها في حياتي. الالقوانين الجديدة للجاذبية جعلت من العالم يغير من نظرته الكلاسيكية عن عالم الفيزياء و عملت على تغيير مفهومنا ونظرتنا للكون. نظرية الأوتار الفائقة مكنت الفيزيائيين الاقتراب من نظرية موحدة سميت -M هذه النظرية التي تسمى نظرية كل شيء و قد تفوقت على ميكانيكا الكم التي لم تدمج الجاذبية في حساباتها. نظرية -M لم تكتمل بعد لعدم مقدرة الفيزيائيين على تصورها في شكلها النهائي فمازال البحث طويلا ولكن بالمقابل دمجت القوى الأربع- الجاذبية . القوى الضعيفة . القوى القوية. القوى الكهرومغناطيسية. - لنقترب من معرفة كيف ولماذا خلق الكون؟

I have to admit this has been a book I have had a love-hate relationship with for a good few months. I may have had it a lot easier than others as the friend who graciously loaned me this book had preempted me with a few documentary videos of Stephen Hawking and BBC as an introduction to the subject. Nevertheless, the universe is (as always) a long and lengthy subject to grasp and claiming that reading this book was a breeze would do the universe no justice.

Thanks to three hours or so of videos, reading the first few chapters of this book was like reading revision notes on a day's worth of lecture. I wouldn't say I made every effort to understand each mathematic equation or even appreciate the technicality of physics and quantum mechanics that make the most part of this book, but I can now truly appreciate how mind-blowing it is to perceive the universe to be so much more than a big black blanket of space.

Greene offered a glimpse of how quantum physicists and mathematicians look at our universe and writes eloquently on the slow and painstaking process of discovering the universe and the mechanics of it through decades of theories, collaboration and backsteps. I especially love how he details the life of himself and his colleagues as they accept each others strength and weaknesses on the subject and push each other to their limits to solve the mysteries that the universe has set at their doorstep. That itself would have probably made it a much more enjoyable book for me.

As much as I am grateful for being given the opportunity to appreciate this subject via layman standards, I still feel that the book needs to be expressed a little better. Introductions on some parts of the subject could have been spared as the selling point of this book seems to be the concept of possibilities rather than dry science.

I ended this book feeling a little overwhelmed - not sure if it is because of all the unnecessary fluff leading up to String Theory, the anticipation of whether String Theory will live up to its potential of a unified theory, or the fact that Greene had unsuspectingly dumped all his hopes and ideologies into the last few pages of the book to sell his idea of String Theory to the masses.

I am all set to read Paul Davies' take on this...just as soon as I recover.

Though the first third of this book was amusing and accessible in a childish way, the book as a whole left me with a feeling that my brain is as tiny and crumpled up as a Calabi-Yau space, whichever shape it implies! :(

My opinion of this book is similar but not equal to Rob's (though I liked his review), because I didn't think the first third of the book gave me a fairly good understanding of the Einstein's relativity concepts at all. For instance, the rubber membrane - bowling ball analogy was totally misleading for me.
I like Marvin's review much more and I think it's clear why. :)
Anyway, after this book I felt an awful need to 'unwarp' and 'uncurl' my brain, which made me look for another one - with better explanations of physics concepts ... and I had luck! Hmm, could this be the reason to change my rating to 5 stars?! No, because my lucky find doesn't deal with the string theory.

Almost forgot to add: My lucky find was The Perception of Space... and its Measurement plus Galloping with Light - The Special Theory of Relativity by Felix Alba-Juez