A Brief History of Time

I finally got around to reading this book. When it first came out, in 1988, I had no inclination to read it. It looked like something by a self-satisfied, smarter-than-you-are brainiac who thinks he has all the answers. A lot of that has to do with the subtitle (added by the publisher) and the introduction (by someone who is a self-satisfied, smarter-than-you-are brainiac; or rather, was - he knows better now).

I also enjoyed the advantage of reading the updated and illustrated 1996 edition, with lots of color pictures and graphs and stuff. It has a better cover, too - I have newfound respect for Mr. Hawking, but one is forced to concede that the aesthetics of the cover are inversely proportional to the amount of space allotted to his picture. And no Carl Sagan.

To my surprise, Stephen Hawking wrote a very even-handed and accessible book about not so much the history of time, but rather the history of theories of the universe. Fascinating stuff.

He does mention how he personally believes, but he doesn't dogmatically assert that he is right to the exclusion of dissenting opinions. I even agreed with him quite a bit.