Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The Elegant Universe, Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory is a great book. Its great for physics afficionados and interested amatuers alike. The book is about Superstring Theory and how the little vibrating bands called strings may be not only the smallest consituents of nature but also may explain all of nature and unite all theories (such as the great divide between general relativity and quantum mechanics.)

This is a great book for its clear and concise writing style, its outstanding use of analogy to describe complex natural phenomena and its historical documentation as well as its outright factual content. I enjoyed the chronological and historical aspects very much. The first half of the book takes the reader through some of the first significant discoveries and scientists (Ptolemy, Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, ->) up to more modern influential thinkers (Einstien, Hawking, Witten -> etc.) The book does a fantastic job of providing a foundation and history of point particle physics before it delves into the more abstract and theoretical "perturbative" world of Superstrings. The second half of the book clearly explains the current knowledge on Superstrings. While I found the first part of the book more interesting and less "work" to read, the latter half is also very well written (yet it is admittedly more technical and abstract.)

The subject matter of the book is of course some of the most significant matters of human knowledge. Personally I am more of a "show me, prove it" kind of person. I think that skepticism is central to science. While the intricate details of Superstrings are "elegant" they are unproven as the author himself points out (he also admits that the skepticism is natural, its a theory we are only beginning to uncover.) There is much surrounding and peripheral evidence to support string theory but there is also still much to be learned and demonstrated. Hopefully more research and more work can yield more concrete verification of the framework of Superstrings. For now, I say its a great book and it would be great if it all pans out, but the jury should remain out, remain skeptical until more is understood.

Overall: 5.0 Penguin Afros (on our scale of 5.2), great book for all, skeptics and believers alike. Great history, full of interesting fact and clear analogy, get it and read it, good stuff.   Book Review: The Elegant Universe, Briane Greene