I'm not sure who the target audience for this book is. On one hand the book makes attempts at humor to seem approachable, but on the other hand it does not actually do much to make the information approachable.

Those with enough background and mastery of the terminology and concepts probably wouldn't reach for such a "basic" book. And those without are seeking real-life, concrete examples to make the new terms and concepts less abstract.

Here's an example of an example from the book: "Imagine a two-dimensional plane." Really?

I would like to say kalau buku ini mewakili perjalanan mengikuti mata kuliah peminatan tentang lahirnya jagat raya seperti kosmologi, astrofisika, dan relativitas umum. Entah 3 atau 2 sks dengan 16kali pertemuan lumayan buat mual melihat cacing-cacing kosmik lol.

Buku hawking dengan buku kuliah yang bersangkutan perbedaannya ada di penyampaian yang ringkas dan to the point, tidak ada rumus, dan timelinenya juga runtut.

untuk orang yang masih berusaha open sama pemikiran saintis yang ego seperti saya, aku harus menyampaikan bahwa ilmu/teori/pengetahuan itu dinamis. and its okay to change your perspective when you know the new one.

“Nobody understands quantum mechanics.” - Rick Feynman

Accessible and generally clear in its explanations of theories.

Really brief, without the detail of his previous (and similar books), if that is what folks are looking for. And it updates his previous book with new data/discoveries since then (which is great if you have read his previous works). Overall recommend to a general audience.

Hawking knew this book would be his last, so he pulls no punches (not that he ever did, but this time he is much more explicit about God). So if you are a religious person of any vein who does not wish to challenge that, then I guess "general audience" is not the best term. I say this without any malice or sarcasm. Example:

"The scientific determinism that Laplace formulated is the modern scientist’s answer to question two. It is, in fact, the basis of all modern science, and a principle that is important throughout this book. A scientific law is not a scientific law if it holds only when some supernatural being decides not to intervene. Recognizing this, Napoleon is said to have asked Laplace how God fit into this picture. Laplace replied: “Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis.""

As great a book as A Brief History of Time, except for one thing: Hawking almost lost me when he blurted early in the book that philosophy was dead and useless. He gave fantastic background and detail to support everything else in this book except that odd statement.

While I have concerns about the philosophical naivety which happens in the early part of the book, the latter chapters are not as deeply affected by it as I had thought they would be. What you ultimately get is a fairly clear exposition of a cutting edge of physics which cuts through some of the hype that may have been heard elsewhere. By the end, the idea of a spontaneous universe, in the sense of a physical theory, seems a lot more plausible. As it is presented, it's married to a multiple histories interpretation of quantum mechanics, but I wonder how much of that is necessary given observational equivalents (such as my preferred Bohmian-causal interpretation). Overall, an enjoyable read.

I don't feel any smarter having read it but it also didn't make me feel dumb. Some interesting parts but the last chapter feels like a tangent rather than ending.

Absolument nécessaire que chaque personne qui puisse comprendre les propos tenus dans cet ouvrage le lise au moins une fois. Je l'ai moi-même jonché de marque-pages et post-its, et vais m'en servir de vaisseau vers la création de ma propre cartographie, recensant mes maigres connaissances en la matière.
Ce fut la première fois que je lisais le grand Stephen Hawking.
Je me suis fait la promesse que cela ne sera pas la dernière.

Very approachable book touching on all of the different parts of M Theory (at a non text-book level), and how when you apply logic and maths to the observable universe you can come up with a theory that supports all of the models it has been tested against so far. This and the fact that you can have a universe (several in fact) that arise from nothing without the necessity of a divine being.