Rating: 
Summary: A Series of Fantastic Revelations.
Review: Reading this book took my breath away.I learned more from reading 'THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING" than from four years of college.this is the greatest book on ever written in its field.I was amazed at how understandable it was.Brilliant!
Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction, but somewhat oversimplified.
Review: Stephen Hawking's The Theory of Everything is a short book that can act as an introduction to the subjects of cosmology raised by modern science, but the book is only that; I preferred his Brief History of Time to this work because it was longer, more detailed, and covered more ground. If you are looking for a very basic introduction to the current thinking of astrophysicists, this is a good book; if you really want to wrestle with the subject at length, you should buy a Brief History of Time, or one of Paul Davies works, such as About Time. If you are looking for a good lecture series on physics, Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces and its sequel, Six Not So Easy Pieces is really the finest of this genre. That being said, the book does a good job in outlining the basic subject matter, discussing the development of the Big Bang theory, and the implications of both the general theory of relativity and quantum physics on the formation of the universe. Hawking is at his best when discussing singularities -- the points of the universe, such as black holes, where the laws of physics break down.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on the Universe.
Review: The book is a serie of lecture by the author at differrent time. It gives an idea of several basic things about people who are interested in learning about the universe to the students of the subject. His explantion is quite clear and easy to understand. It also explains time travel. If you are interested about the universe and don't know where to start. This is a book you can begin with and that's how I see it.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for the title but wait Steph really write this book.
Review: This book comes from seven Hawking lectures:history of the history of universe,big-bang,black-holes,Hawking emission,no boundary condition,a (crazy?)arrows of time explication:if acepted it means evil(universal unconscious disorder) always has the last word respect intelligence, I hope a such proof impossible, and finally how whe are trying to find an unified theory of all interactions in physics.
I am a Sci-Fi fan that read about science only to be able to understand some difficult Sci-fi storys, so i approve this book,also if it is not (yet?) authorised or revised by Hawking,as a provocation to him to rewrite this book periodicallly.
So i Sci-fi provocate him also more to rewrite it by reviewing its next future edition.
In this book Steph will examine the theory of everything in this way:let A to be the theory of everything than for time going to now A has to prove A but so, for Goedel theorem of incompletess ,than A cannot be a numerical theory but it has to be a theory made in a self contradicting language:plain english.
In fact every book trying to explain a mathematic theory of everything has to start whith an explication of Why men speaks and dont simply give numbers if it exist a numeric form of theory of everything.
More precisely,how can mathematics explain that self-awareness was born thanks to unifying and so in a universe of gender(lion+rabbit=;fire+water=;etc.) so a world where usually there is a solution due to the kind of involved objects without need of numbers,and only by science we are going to study situations like (x lions and x wolfs;x Bad and x bad;x doctors and x viruses etc.) where x is a number or a function and the solution depend from x?
Which is the algebraic transformation that aggregates numbers so much, that they most often, don't need any more to be considered by their value because their same shape become distinctive?
It is evident that,aside for some hope based on cellular automata and similar,actual mathematics still miss the basic algebric tool to explain how,our gender world derives from quantity,and basic research in this field is still needed, not to return to a medioval gender culture, but to include it.
Anyway however you are going in this reasoning,Hawking is a perfect walking friend in those questions, for the clarity of his thinking and the deepness of his mathematics(if you where so lucky that you can follow him hight there ),so I hope Hawking will forgive we readers ,if we like to steal a litle bit of his knowledge (we are anyway in debt with him for his not been a Nobel!).
So,for the limited aim of unifying relativity and quantum mechanics, Hawking works on blacks holes to me shows that any border to this universe has to emit a form of Hawking radiation that destroy that limit and so universe can always expand.
This does time too in contraining every interacting thing to the same Plank instant.
That time Hawking radiation propagate to future in form of historic residue and this is why yesterday's rose color is never so bright than today's .
Can it propagate to past in form of scientific law so that quantum mechanics is probabilistic for future but has to be kept historically deterministic about the same past misuration and so time contemporneousness become more widen with universe age?, if any scientific law has to be mathematically consistent whith Hawking radiation how can we ignore his lecturers,how can we stop looking for this phenomenon?.
So Hawking work has already proved not only that the universe can have not a start and end, but also that anything inside can have not,been made by the same equation.
So i recommend to buy this book, and if you dont read it put it in library ,just look sometime to the title and dream about when it will come next edition and meanwhile we can let it at right side of Douglas Adams's : -"The Salmon of Doubt" - this ending Sic-fi and Hawking's :-"The theory of everything" - beginning Science: be careful universes can spring in the middle.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading for an arm chair theoretical physicist.
Review: This book is a very easy read because it is written so well. No math of course. I enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to reading some of the bigger books that Hawking has out. This book goes into very little detail but made me want to know more.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes complex ideas much easier to understand.
Review: This book is basically a history and philosophy about chemistry, physics, and especially astronomy. Ideas discussed in this book are very complex, yet broken down very well into understandable chunks. Still, a general backround in the physical sciences is necessary to really grasp what he's saying. One way he makes ideas understandable is by using simple analogies. For example, he is talking about how as the universe expands, all bodies around the earth move away from it, making it seem like we really are the center of the universe. However, he clears this up by offering the analogy of a balloon being blown up that has dots all over it. From the perspective of any dot, all the other dots are moving away from it and there really is no center. I found it to be a fast read, but one that I wanted to go over once again just to understand things better.
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Summary: I CAN'T BELIEVE I UNDERSTOOD IT !
Review: THIS BOOK MAKES EVERYTHING I HAVE ALWAYS WOUNDERED ABOUT REASONABLY EASY TO UNDERSTAND.IT ALMOST READS LIKE A MYSTERY WHERE THE READER GETSB AT THE END OF EACH CHAPTER TO FIND OUT "WHO DONE IT."I LEARNED MORE FROM THIS BOOK THAN FROM ALL OF MY TIME IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.CLEARLY THIS IS PROFFESSOR HAWKINGS MASTER WORK.
Rating:
Summary: lacks substance
Review: This book provides a historical perspective of the events leading up to the quest for finding a unified theory. It is a very light read that can be finished in a couple of hours. In some points, Steven Hawking dwelves a little deeper, especially in his own work on blackholes. However, if the reader is looking for more substance, especially into today's challenges, then I recommend the following book, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene.
Rating:
Summary: Treading water
Review: This book, like the theory of relativity, is something I can grasp for a brief period of time and then it slips away. The first chapters gave a fascinating history and mini-review of where we've been but as he progressed I could not get my mind around some of the concepts he was discussing and some of the basic terms he used weren't explained. Such is the fate when trying to appeal to a broader range of people. For me, Carl Sagan's works were much easier to understand. Hawking does an admirable job but if you do not have a science background, or are bent in that direction, this may not be the best book for you. For us poor huddled masses what Hawking needs to do is get a good ghost writer with a minimal science background and have the writer come up with analogies to what Hawking is discussing. I know I could have used some additional explaining when he started talking about the extra 20+ dimensions, singularities and the string theory. Around the string theory I stopped treading water and drowned. All in all though, I would like to see more of trying to explain science to us unwashed and sadly miss Sagan. Hawking is to be commended and I hopes he continues the attempts. I will attempt to read his future works in that direction.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Journey
Review: This is a book that takes the most incomprehensible material, theories, and operations of our universe, and breaks them down to the simplest form. Using "balloon" analogies and simple descriptions, Hawking is able to simplify the theories of space, time, and, well, 'Everything' else. I loved this book! Whether you're a fan of science fact, or science fiction, this is a book that will expand your understanding and appreciation of our wonderful universe.
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