Book Review: The Universe In A Nutshell

I picked The Universe in a Nutshell an audiobook and listened to it during my commute. It's Hawking's more accessible overview of astrophysics and it's history.

It's a fun and accessible read for those that have an interest in the subject matter, but aren't well versed on it (or have let their knowledge atrophy). I don't think I'd recommend it as an audiobook for commutes though. For one, it's not exactly concentration-free. Secondly, he refers to the occasional diagram which of course you can't see.

There are a couple sections of the book where he talks about thought-trends in the scientific community and how often they fall by the wayside for the next big thing. For a field with a storied history, you'd think they'd learn that their history indicates that each idea has a high probability of not being "the final theory". Kind of reminded me of our own obsession with whatever the current 'big thing' is (microtransactions, facebook, etc).