I have always found the popularity of Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' slightly baffling. It is probably exceptionally brilliant, coming as it does from one of the best (discovered) minds of our time; but it is not brilliantly accessible (if that is possible for such a topic) - I tried reading it, and gave up. I suppose one factor in the book's popularity is the appeal of the magnificent brain in a ruined body - transcending the fleshly concerns of us relative dimwits.

If you want to understand the things that Hawking talks about in such frustrating (for me at least - I'm pretty clueless about physics and cosmology) complexity, I think that 'Black Holess and Time Warps' is a better bet. It delves in fascinating and reasonably comprehensible detail into the extreme pecularities, vast and tiny scales, and violent forces of our Universe. Kip Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cal-Tech, is an excellent scientist in his own right, and he dedicates this book to examining the weirdest of the many counter-intuitive facts and theories which his mindstretching discipline has thrown up. Do not expect an easy read; but if you are willing to jump through the requisite mental hoops, you will find some very strange things lurking on the other side.

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