The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a great follow-up to The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. It didn't repeat a lot of material from the first one, it explained the progression in physics since then. It was pretty mind-blowing. I did get a little stuck in some sections, but I decided that a perfect understanding of the topic wasn't strictly necessary for my purposes.

I do think Greene protests too much that every aspect of physics isn't a *miracle.* I've never heard of so many miracles I believe in, even if, as Greene claims it's statistically expected when dealing with such large numbers. "Shoes in my size" indeed!

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The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my new favorite physics book. It's hard gaging these books because I always bring what I read in a previous physics-for-the-common-man tome to the next, but this one reviewed some concepts I already had some familiarity with in a clear comprehensible way and also introduced me to new concepts. It was also fun. Yes, really. The craziness of time-space being a location or the specifics of how time travel might be possible are a lot of fun.

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The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a disappointment. I've heard Brian Greene talk about physics on podcasts and seen little clips of him in documentaries. I thought this book would reflect the unique way he explains physics to make it widely accessible. This was mostly true at the very beginning of the book, but as soon as he got into quantum physics things got very dull. And really, quantum physics isn't dull. It's the opposite of dull. It's the craziest, wildest, most full of possibility stuff of nonfiction you could possibly hope for-- crazier even then fiction -- there are multiple universes!  So it's disappointing that this book was dull.

That said, this clarified the rubber band (donut?) shape of strings to me as the smallest unit. And duality as applied to multiple string theories, to the extent that I understood it, was really interesting. We're on the precipice of of an incredible understanding of the universe.

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