This book ebbed and flowed for me. I loved the exploration of evolution, cultures, history, and time. I thought the evolutionary reasoning for religion was fascinating and presented a balanced view. I did fade into boredom during the detailed science of particles, black holes, and the heat death of the universe. I wish Greene had more clearly connected how the understanding of quantum principles could change or affect the life of an individual or humankind beyond the joy in the experience of knowing. He did touch on the absurdity of thinking about the end of time within a human mind which lacks capacity for a visceral comprehension of time on such a scale. Overall, I couldn't quite put my finger on a single thesis as there seemed many abstract points about learning, human nature, and our search for meaning.

One of the most important and enlightening books of our age. This book will take time to read and digest but when you have finished an understanding of your place in the universe will become clear. The only question that will remain is how you will choose to dance your version of the entropic two step.

In the early 2000s I read The Elegant Universe and I recall it being one of my favorite popular books on physics that I’ve come across. I eagerly awaited this one, and unfortunately it never really resonated with me in terms of the content – it was less revelatory and more contemplative which one usually doesn’t come across in a hard science work. The physics covered is fairly standard for this genre and then you have what seems like a whole chapter on the importance of art. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a bit clumsy here at least in my view. I would definitely pick up a future Greene book but hoping it would be less navel gazing and more on the latest in physics research.

Brian Greene covers a lot of ground in this book, literally beginning to end. He does a wonderful job of bringing together the leading discoveries and theories of time, space, life, language, meaning and belief. If anything, the book is too broad. As a result there is some incongruity among the various chapters and the reading bogs down a bit toward the middle. Nonetheless, I'm very glad I read the book. He brings us the possibilities and probabilities of the far far future - until the end of time.

Life, the universe and everything, that is the famous book by Douglas Coupland, could well be the subtitle of this book by Brian Green, where he writes about religion, physics, biology, philosophy, history, mathematics, chemistry and in short practically about all there is, to arrive almost at a theory of everything, which - even if it is not what physicists have been looking for in the last 30 years- is certainly a global vision of what has happened so far and why we have found ourselves in the here and now.

La vita, l'universo e tutto quanto, ovvero il famoso libro di Douglas Coupland, potrebbe benissimo essere il sottotitolo di questo libro di Brian Green, dove si parla di religione, fisica, biologia, filosofia, storia, matematica, chimica e insomma praticamente non avanza niente, per arrivare quasi ad una teoria del tutto, che anche se non é quella che i fisici stanno cercando da tempo, sicuramente é una visione globale di quanto accaduto finora e di come mai ci siamo trovati nel qui ed ora.

THANKS EDELWEISS FOR THE ARC!

An incredibly detailed explanation of the history and future if our planet, as well as life itself. Greene does an excellent job explaining the science and also explaining the levels of certainty we have about each theory he discusses. This was a slow read for me as much of the science was beyond me, but I did really enjoy learning along the way.

Why do old theoretic physicists tend to rattle about the subjects they are not experts in?
This book is not as bad as those non-physics books of M. Kaku, but I managed to read only 50% of the book, and stopped when he started talking about the evolutionary drive for artistic talent. If I wish to know did humans evolved artistic talent and how, I will read the book by evolutionary biologists, not a theoretical physicist.
I loved his physics books, those were amazing and wonderful, but this divagation into several subjects that he's not an expert on turned to be very tedious and chafing with their lack of true scientific rigor. It's like he thought that since he's an expert in complex math that he can understand and master philosophy, biology, anthropology, sociology, theology, psychology, consciousness, etc.
All this meandering produced a very poor book, written on the level of the articles for popularistic magazines.
A big disappointment all over.