While I rather enjoyed Gribbin's previous works (especially the one about Schroedinger's Cats and its sequel) this one was a little disappointment. The first 2/3 of the book was simply boring. Or maybe it's my fault reading too much bookon the history of astronomy... :-) The latter third of the book wasn't boring, it was rather dry instead. Sorry, not my favourite from John Gribbin. ( )

I enjoyed this. A nice balance of explaining what we think we know together with why we think this. All too often science books miss out the whole finding and testing of the evidence bit of science and this in my opinion is the most interesting and fun bit.

This book talks us through the nuclear processes in the big bang and in stars which ultimately explain the way the universe looks today. No math but just enough detail to help us follow the deductions and thought processes involved. He also gives a brief taste of the all too human personalities involved and how these helped to nudged each other into looking at things which led to certain key breakthroughs.

A nice speculative appendix applying evolutionary principles to the many worlds theory and introducing the fact that many of the laws of the universe which make life as we know it possible also make black holes possible.

A useful further reading list which I will take into account.

I will add this author to my reading list. ( )