Like some others, I am a little confused as to who the intended audience of this book is. At times, Hawking does a phenomenal job breaking down ideas so the unfamiliar can grasp them. This is probably the first time my brain really wrapped around the concept of a finite space-time with no borders, for example. But for every time I felt like something was explained very clearly, there were other places where fundamental basics were hopped over, or barely alluded to before building up the strata of more complex ideas. His explanation of supergravity and string theory, for instance, explained the theories without really giving the presuppositions that those theories are predicated on first. Im glad I already have a little background with String Theory, because this wouldn’t have helped. Overall, the book gives too much information on some things that would likely bore a person with extensive background knowledge in physics, then under explains other things that would be needed for a newcomer to the field.

Further, Hawking’s voice sometimes comes off as a little pretentious. Sometimes his asides are sweet, but many times he seems to poke a little bit at other authors, spending lots of time discussing who won what award and what conference he went to and how he thought of something first. I couldn’t help but feel a lot of the time spent discussing the accolades won could have been better spent clearly and succinctly laying out the foundations of all these physical properties with examples so that they could be grasped by the average reader. His conclusions on God also seem much more definite than they have any reason to be: none of the physical theories he lays out necessarily preclude some sort of Creator. Of course he is allowed to come to his own conclusions on the matter, but a bounded universe without beginning or end still doesn’t move the dial in any direction. A Creator would have to be outside the current system to start it off, which means by definition we could not make any test that would disprove its existence. 3 stars.