Cosmos Books

What an exciting read! Any intelligent layperson who wants to keep up with the latest science about the universe, including the Big Bang, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, will learn much. I have already bought 4 copies: 1 to underline (underline - haven't done that since college days!) and 3 to give as gifts. I've re-read this book 3 times. Kudos to the authors for helping me vision my place in the universe.

I have not finished reading this book but already find it VERY INTERESTING AND "FOOD FOR THOUGHT" ! I am enrolled in a Senior Adults class at the local University which is using this text for discussion and study. So far this is a very new ..for most of us..way of looking at the importance of the role we play in the universe. The authors challenge us with modern scientific facts that open up a whole new view of our potential in our wonderful Universe !

The fist two parts of this book are excellent and show some good scientific research. The 3rd part, however, delves into conjecture and pure mysticisms and has llittle scietific relationship to the other two. I was surprised that the 3rd part was even inclkuded in this book and I'd recommend that readers just simply skip it.

This is my second purchase of this book as I bought one to share. The video which comes with the book is also worthy to be shared.

I can't make up my mind who this book is trying to reach; the fundamentalists or the godless scientists. The fundamentalists need the dose of wonder-through-cosmology to replace their biblical literacy and, I presume, the non-religious need an alternative to the horrors of existentialism. Falling in the latter camp (except for the existential bit) I find the voodoo-hoodoo dredged up from human pre-science a bit too much like speaking in tongues. The authors attempt to create a set of symbols to go with this new science/religion as a way to achieve some sort of primal archetype substitution. We have to wait until page 276 and 277 to find out about the new God where suddenly He is mentioned 22 times. The big news is that the authors believe "in God as nothing less than the process of opening our personal lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe". O.K., at least there's nothing in there about rewarding jihadis with 72 virgins, but how much does science have to whittle down the God thing before we dispose of it once and for all?
Lest anyone should think my take-away from this book is all negative let me close on a positive note by recommending it as a good brush-up and review of current cosmology. Many of the concepts such as scale and time bias are worthy of serious thought. It is always a good thing to be reminded of the utter weirdness of the universe.

Dr. Lloyd, Gives a convincing argument of how the universe can be perceived as a huge quantum computer. He also gives an understandable explanation of information theory and how it relates to quantum theory and cosmology. He makes a valiant attempt to unify quantum theory with gravity.

This is a thought-provoking book which explains why we should envision the universe as a quantum computer and how doing so may illuminate our understanding of some difficult questions. In addition it offers a useful summary of quantum computing for the general reader, along with discussions of cosmology, thermodynamics and introductory quantum mechanics (all with a computing "gloss").

As a layperson who had read explanatory books and articles about quantum physics for many years before I ever heard about quantum computers, the first theme the book hammered home for me was that quantum computing in an important sense just is quantum physics. A classical computer can be instantiated in a variety of physical set-ups; a quantum computer is itself a quantum system. While you can try to model a quantum system on a classical computer, you will quickly overwhelm its computational resources. So, quantum computing, in addition to its potential for practical acceleration of computing power generally, gives us a useful and appropriate logical framework to analyze the physics of our world.

The next step for Lloyd is to explore the implications of the ability to perform this kind of "quantum simulation". After describing how the simulation process would work, he makes the conceptual case that, logically, there is no reason to distinguish between what's happening in the simulation and the original system.

Now, the step which motivates the book title: while we can't do it yet, in principle the universe (the accessible part, anyway) is finite in extent, and hypothetically could be simulated in a quantum computer. But, following the point above, since the computer has the same number of qubits as the universe, and since the operations on the qubits simulate the universe's dynamics, we can say that at the end of the day the universe can be thought of as performing a quantum computation.

So what does it mean? What can this view do for us? I think there are two possible answers, one concrete and one more intangible. First, ideas from quantum computing may help in the quest for a theory of quantum gravity. Second, it may offer an improved paradigm for interpreting and understanding the physical world. These ideas are furthre explored in the book.

I am not a physicist or mathemetician, but I take a great interest in information theory, infophysics, quantum computing etc. There are several books on the subject - some distiliations by journalist/authors, others are books for the layperson written by authorities (Lloyd, Deutsch)

This book takes a more physics-oriented apporach to the issue of universal quantum computing, and omits a fair amount of detail about computation itself. This book is not for peer consumption, but rather for the general public. It is an idea to which I subscribe, given what little I know.

If you want more details, read Deutsch, or various websites on quantum computing (www.qubit.org). This is a vast, technical area of science that cuts across almost all disciplines. The implications of a working quantum computer are staggering, as are its implications with respect to time and time travel.

My only gripe with this book is Lloyd's own self promotion and friendly attempts to poke holes in Deutsch's ideas of the multi-verse. I am not interested in academic ego contests - save them for the conferences. State your case, offer some unamed alternatives, and write up a good bibliography. Thats all I ask!

Seth does a fine job of explaining the quantum theory of how the universe works. Easy to understand and an interesting read.

The author says that the universe is a computer because it manipulates matter in an automatic, unthinking way - just like a computer.
But surely this is a circular argument? As the computer works by using the laws of physics, it is a truism to say that the laws of physics themselves constitute a computation. What does this statement actually tell us?
I was hoping that the book would put some flesh on the author's idea, but after reading it I'm still waiting.
At any point in the history of humanity, we have used our most sophisticated knowledge for explanatory purposes. When the most sophisticated machine was a clock, we described the universe as a clockwork machine. Now that the cleverest thing we know is quantum theory, we get books like this.

A very well written book and a thought provoking one. However, it dares to claim that information is the ultimate theory that explains it all, failing short of convincing the reader that that is the case. There are plenty of exaggerated statements about how "information" explains everything, that energy is the same as information, etc., all of them based on very week connections and evidence. As many other authors, this one confuses theory of information, with Shannon's theory of efficient message coding. The author also keeps confused with the role of the observer in the information processes, sometimes requiring it/him/her, sometimes dismissing it/him/her as unnecessary.

This is great writing, though not exactly science writing. Because competing or deflating theories or studies are not presented, Seife's arguments are speculative, not of the smoke-and-mirror quality of new-agers, but based upon careful presentation of amazing scientific theory, experiment, mystery. Therefore, I take the book's argument not as an advance over prior theories of physics, but as a provocation of them. As long as the reader takes it for this, it can masterfully explain and strangely entertain. Seife will take you on a marvelous ride, expose you to such intelligibilities as: "... you are bringing the Earth infinitesimally closer to a state of chaos when you chill down a bottle of beer in your fridge" (50) or "... altering the structure of the universe with information" (257).

Even if you don't buy all his qubits or multiverses, Seife will inform you of entropy, relativity and quantum physics in a way that can help the non-scientific reader better understand those theories.

As I followed it, Information theory seemed to veer from the intuitive/simple to the counterintuitive/complex. One way of using Information (signaling to Lexington that the British are coming) seemed not to fit the way it may be used to describe electrons. This veering may be peculiar to me or it may be the nature of how Information serves in different contexts.

Complex Information has never been so compelling. It reads quickly, like a pot-boiler/page turner.

I have a Ph.D. in Physics and therefore know many well educated scientists, but very few have a functional concept of Information as a physical science. Begun with, mostly, Claude Shannon, this topic of study has been growing into a real science for decades now, but for some reason it is one of the most misunderstood subjects out there, even for seasoned professional scientists. Seife cuts to the heart of the matter with very clear thinking and examples from a very well rounded range of scientific points of view. Seife clearly and very engagingly demystifies many confusing topics and brings a real and almost visceral familiarity to a complex subject. After reading this, you will understand many esoteric scientific concepts better than even some professionals... and enjoy it immensely!

This book is easy to read and is well written, but does not have much depth. The author has proven to be able to explain clearly complex ideas, but seems to lack enough background for some of the fields that the book explores. E.g., the enthusiasm with which the author explains that in an infinite universe there are many (infinite) worlds like ours seems annoying, and has little if anything to do with information or the holographic principle. It is a quite trivial idea valid for many cosmological theories.

Anyway, you can have a good time reading it, and if you are not an expert in information theory, you can find here good explanations of some basic concepts.

The author has a degree in probability theory and artificial intelligence, but he is a professor of journalism and has therefore written a book which is both very entertaining and not too difficult to understand. The subject is information, which Seife claims is the third XXth century revolution in physics started by Claude Shannon and which has relations with the other two: Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Of course, information is also related to thermodynamics and entropy, so the book contains a discussion of all these topics: thermodynamics, relativity and quantum mechanics. Famous conundrums such as Schroedinger's cat, entanglement, Maxwell's demon, etc. are analyzed from the point of view of information theory.

Here are some snippets of the book:

According to Seife, Einstein dictum "Nothing can travel faster than light" is really about information:" Information speed cannot exceed c". Another interesting fact is that what really causes computers to heat is the erasure of bits.

Seife describes recent achievements and experiments, proof that he is familiar with the latest results. One curious example is the solution of "the knight problem" in 2000 by using a DNA computer! Another one is that the entire human race has less genetic diversity than a few scores of chimps due to some kind of cataclysm about 500,000 years ago. A third one is the 1996 experiment demonstrating the existence of virtual particles (the so called Casimir effect).

In chapter 7, quantum computers are introduced and the possibility of the brain being one is briefly discussed. Unfortunately, it seems that Max Tegmark proved Roger Penrose wrong on this count. You begin to understand the power of quantum computation when the author describes Grover's algorithm to guess a number out of 16. Classically you need four yes/no answers to four questions. Grover manages the same task with two. Quantum computation reduces the complexity of some problems from n to square root of n.

I found also very interesting the reasons why the photoelectric effect cannot be explained by waves. On the other hand, interference cannot be explained by a corpuscular theory of light, so we are stuck with duality.

Towards the end, the author discusses black holes and the holographic principle: the quantity of information contained in a ball is not limited by its volume (surprisingly), but by its area. Since most cosmologists consider now the universe infinite (inflation seems to imply this) we are led, via the holographic bound, to the conclusion that the universe contains infinite copies of our own bubble universe. Seife admits that this is the most bizarre thing among the many ones described in his book.

A layman accessible look at the various sciences supporting cosmology.

As you can see from the author, the only actual Hawking here is the beginning, but his work is referenced at various stages throughout.

A pretty interesting and decent looking book, but obviously out of date pictorially, now

This is a classic book. And it looks great on a coffee table. Everyone will think you're smart.

A great book to have and read, and to tell people that you read it.

Stephen Hawking's universe is one of the very few books of its kind. It describes the complex and beautiful picture of our cosmos as presented by the most famous living scientist of the world. This book will prove helpful and informative for all those who are concerned with the universe and also with Professor Hawking.
Stephen Hawking's universe is such a book which tends to describe a difficult subject with simplicity and ace. Thus any one out there who is intrested in cosmology and is waiting for a new arrival the please do have a look at this one.

Stephen Hawking's Universe is a book that attempts to explain Stephen Hawking's theories of how the universe was created. Under Stephen's theories he supports the Big Bang. In the Big Bang theory it states that the universe was created by a big explosion. Aside from explaining the Big Bang theory, the book also talks a little about Hawking's personal life before he developed Lou Gehrig’s syndrome which has paralyzed him for life.
Although the book talks about Stephen Hawking's Work, it mentions
very little. The book focuses mostly on the history of cosmology and various other cosmologists who have attempted to find the beginnings to the universe. If you are looking for a book that describes in depth Hawking's work and his theories, then this is not the right book.

Stephen Hawking is widely acknowledged as one of the most intelligent persons on the planet, often seen as the intellectual successor to Einstein in reputation if not in actual adherence to theories. This book by David Filkin is a companion to book to a BBC/PBS series by the same name, highlighting different aspects and ideas that came from the television production.

Stephen Hawking's own book, `A Brief History of Time', is a very popular and accessible account of modern theoretical physics - it is somewhat astonishing that a book on this topic should have sold well over 10 million copies worldwide, being translated into many languages. Filkin's book looks not only at the theories (many of which can be found in Hawking's book), but also at the personality of the man behind the ideas. Hawking describes himself as a boy who liked to take things apart to see what made them tick - this is a rather difficult enterprise to undertake when dealing with the universe as a whole.

David Filkin and Stephen Hawking were at Oxford together. Filkin was on the crew team, and Hawking was the cox for the team of eight. Filkin writes of knowing Hawking only peripherally then, but being impressed with his determination, something that has continued to show through in Hawking's life, as he battles debilitating illness. However, as Filkin states, it is easy to get lost in thinking of Hawking in those terms. Hawking is worthy of recognition for his academic achievements in their own right - he holds the mathematics chair at Cambridge that Sir Isaac Newton held (and, as testament to its importance, one of the `future scenes' of Star Trek shows the android Data also hold the same chair, mentioning into the futuristic narrative both Newton and Hawking in the same breath).

Despite this brilliance, Hawking readily admits that much of his model of the universe is not his own. Standing on the shoulders of giants, he sees further, but acknowledges his debts to past scientific research. Filking introduces theories of the universe by looking at past models, everything from `turtles all the way down' to Ptolemaic, Copernican, and more modern ideas. Filkin draws in the major scientists of the progress of science - Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, Doppler, and Hubble - and shows a steady progress of science against a backdrop of political, religious and social concerns. The early days of the Hubble discovery of red-shifted light from stars and Einstein's change of view from an eternal, infinite universe to one that had an origin is presented in context of Lemaitre, a cosmologist for the Vatican, who tried to reconcile modern scientific theories with the idea that the universe did have a point or moment of origin; this was not universally accepted (no pun intended), however, as some scientists such as Fred Hoyle continued to argue for an eternal, infinite universe with the Steady State theory.

Beginning with chapter five, and continuing throughout the rest of the text, the real heart of the matter of modern theoretical physics, astronomy and cosmology is presented. Filkin uses both the progress of ideas of Hawking, the progress of technology, and the various personalities involved in the scientific community (most of whom who are presented are still alive and at work) to develop the narrative of understanding the universe. Big Bang theory presented in great detail, including some of the more philosophical/theological concerns involved (while some churches applauded the Big Bang theory because it provided evidence for a moment of creation, others decried it as being contrary to a strict, literal six-day creation interpretation). One of the most intriguing ideas to arise in physics as a part of these developments was the proposition of the black hole, a gravitational oddity that occurs when a supermassive object cannot support its own weight, and the effects on the space-time continuum are so severe that not even light can escape its grasp.

Along the way, Filkin describes in historical and scientific ways the development of ideas of matter (atoms, from ancient Greek thought to modern times), light and energy, dark matter, and more. We learn about WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), MACHO men (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects observers), SETI research (Search for Extraterrestrial Life), and doing the impossible - locating the elusive black hole. How can you see something no one can see?

The limits of observation also play into the limit of the partnership between theory and observation for cosmology. Filkin writes that, through history, there have been historic pairings (Kepler's theories and Brahe's observations make a classic example), but the limits of nature are bumping up against observational ability, and the theoretical limits of such observatories is being reached - nothing at absolute zero can be detected in and of itself, as absolute zero is the lower limit; similarly, very high temperatures render everything opaque and fuzzy. None of this even begins to deal with the observational issue of the observer changing the status (the uncertainty principle).

There is an interesting duality that arises in cosmology - those who think that our understanding of the universe and its principles is nearly complete (Ed Witten, one of the present-day physicists highlighted, speculates in this direction) and those who think that there is still a vast body of unknown information to be discovered. One cannot help but think of the speculation around the turn of the last century, as nineteenth-century science triumphed in its understanding of various things in the world, and intellectual hubris was so high as to make some consider that patent offices would soon be closing, as everything that would ever be invented already had been. The early twentieth century in science destroyed both the intellectual arrogance and the stability of our understanding of the world, and things have continued at a quickening pace for decades. Have we reached the limits? Time will tell.

Of course, that might be imaginary time (thanks to Richard Feynman).

Careful translation of the original Aramaic "Lord's Prayer." Excellent depth and balance. Includes guides for meditation.

There are a few books that contain such dazzling Spiritual Light. The depth of Divine Love and Wisdom in
this book is beyond measure. It will touch your Soul, transform your mind and heal your heart. One of the
best books I have ever read in my life! Friends don't let friends go into the Light, without reading this one!

Vaishali, Naples, FL

The book is a brilliant exploration into the spiritual depths of the Words of Jesus as contained in the New Testament. It uses the Aramaic roots of Jesus' sayings and in doing so leads to a spiritual depth of meaning that the Greek and English translations of his statements are not able to give.

The translations from the Aramaic are then used to develop meditations that give the user an opportunity to explore the words and their depth in a mediated and gradual process.

Douglas-Klotz has obviously developed a wealth of scholarship in this area and made it available in this small and accessible book.

This is one of the most important books in my collection of Spiritual literature. The inspiring ideas are clearly and simply communicated, and the book is laid out in a beautiful yet easy to read format. Seeing the aramaic script is amazing, and I can't say enough about learning these prayers to use for your meditation and contemplation practice. I often carry it with me in my backpack so I can read from it where ever I am. A profound and moving way to come closer to the essence of the Christ consciousness.

I feel blessed to have purchased this book. For most of my life I have been a member of a conservative Protestant church where Jesus was so high above me, I seemed unable to feel a connection. However, about five years ago, I began to read scholarly books and attend lectures about the man Jesus and have gotten a much clearer picture of him and his life. This little book by Neil Douglas Klotz is a great follow up and one I think anyone could understand. Klotz shows how important it is to know the language the historical Jesus spoke and gives a rich and highly spiritual translation of the Lord's Prayer, the Beautitudes, and a few other sayings of Jesus from the Aramaic, which was the native language that this native Jewish rabbi spoke.

I knew Carl Sagan from Pale Blue Dot, Billions and Billions, and especially his wonderful Cosmos (truly, if there is one book everybody should read, Cosmos is it). The man that transpires from these books appeared to me as an wonderful example of what human beings should strive for, and I naturally picked up Poundstone's biography out of curiosity.

Poundstone covers Sagan's life adequately. He does not limit himself to that however, dedicating ample space to explaining the scientific context behind much of Sagan's work. He defends Sagan's positions well, but also presents the positions of some of Sagan's adversaries with apparent honesty.

The low point of this reading is the revelation that Sagan's personal life was not always exemplary. Living with a man as busy and allegedly full of ego as Sagan was a challenge. He married three times, finally finding the ideal partner in his relationship with Ann Druyan, who in particular appears to have made him a better family man.

Sagan's life is fascinating and shows admirable continuity. From his involvement with the question of whether there is life on Mars to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), he has remained largely devoted to the question of extraterrestrial life, a new field initially called exobiology.

Sagan's influence in the scientific world has been huge, if not as a traditional scientist, then as a man who seeded ideas. But his role as a popularizer of science has probably been even more important. In particular, his hit TV show from the 80s, Cosmos, has made his name famous to the point probably of being at some point the second-best known scientist in the 20th century (after Einstein, of course), at least in the US. Many have become scientists later in life after watching the show as kids.

Sagan knew how to teach, as his Cornell students can testify. He was able to inspire awe from the contemplation of the physical world. His always perfect (if a little snobbish-sounding) elocution, and his sometimes poetic stances, touch the mind and the heart.

Poundstone's biography confirms that Sagan was an extremely smart man, and a constant defender of reason. He never tired and always loved what he was doing. Through his books and teaching, he has sent the message that humans should not let their brains at the door. What Voltaire and Swift did with satire, Sagan did with science.

Sagan's untimely end in 1996 at age 62 is tragic, first on a personal level because he was in the end fully aware that his illness could take him, and second for the world at large, as he could have easily provided his insight and wisdom for another twenty years.

Mark Twain once said, "Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph." The quote couldn't be more apt than when examining this work. I initially started to read this book being interested in Carl Sagan the person and what he had to say. I came away feeling it was a tedious chore.

First off, the book is divided into short subsections that make for easy stopping points. The initial happenings start like most biographies do by tracing Sagan's roots starting from his Grandparents on down. It details his early childhood and precocious nature which was evident from the start. The story quickly moves on to his early commitment to be an astronomer even though this wasn't regarded highly at the time. Throughout the book Carl's marriages are also discussed in some detail. My major complaint with the book starts with all of the dreadful descriptions of every single scientific project Sagan worked on. Even after the reader gets the gist the writer continues to drone on and on about what I felt were insignificant details to the extent they were described. For example, Sagan was a big proponent of a nuclear winter theory. The idea being that nuclear war would adversely affect the climate by cooling it and possibly leading to the complete demise of life as we know it. Well, Poundstone elaborates on this for close to 100 pages. At one point I had to flip to the cover of the book to make sure I hadn't picked up a book about nuclear holocaust or annihilation. Poundstone also goes into monotonous detail over every one of the Viking, Voyager, Pioneer, and Seti projects that Sagan worked on. My question would be-is this all there was to Carl Sagan? Was his work more important than who he was as a person?

The writer's language also does not flow very well. He is far from eloquent. He seems bright enough but everything seems forced and tentative like he is trying to think of what to say and how to say it. Sometimes this leads to non sequitur types of passages. As I was reading I kept feeling like I was missing some punch line. Eventually, I realized I wasn't missing anything but it was simply the writer's inability to communicate.

One good thing I felt the writer did do was display Sagan's faults and shortcomings. We are led to see that he was often egotistical, dismissing of former close friends, and not always a very good father. His friend's opinions of him are also revealed in somewhat explicit detail. For these reasons I feel the book isn't a complete waste but overall I was left with a feeling of distaste for it.

I've been a fan of Carl Sagan's popularization of science since the "Cosmos" days. I agree he wasn't the most brilliant scientist around, but he did more to make people interested in astronomy than any scientist of his generation and beyond.

This biography goes way too far into the scientific realm, but doesn't tell me much about Sagan as a man. As a student of astrophysics (a hobby, not a career for me), I found the science interesting, but it wasn't why I bought this book.

I was more influenced by his books then TV appearances on Cosmos, which was a great show. The book really made me smile and reminded me of what was great about the scientist and the man. As we all are, he was mortal and flawed and this book did not try to hide either. It's possible Sagan's final note to us all was his article at the end of the now defunct George magazine. In it, he looked foreward and encouraged us all to take better care of our planet and fellow inhabitants.

You can add me to the list of people who was about 7 or so when I first saw Cosmos, and it was a major influence (along with 2 scientist parents of my own) to go into science (not astronomy). Carl Sagan, and the way he made science poetic, influenced me greatly.

I feel that an absolute must in a biography, is fairness. I neither want to read idolatry, nor a muckracking book. This book was fair in its depiction of Sagan: a brilliant scientist, who cared about the world, science, writing, and his own ego. I especially liked the sections on his work with NASA on the various Mars missions; where do we land, what experiments do we perform, and just what do the results mean, anyway?

There was enough information about his background and personal life to keep it interesting, but not so much that it bored me. I was unaware of his first marriage to Lynn Margulis; a famous scientist in her own right.

This biography moved very quickly; I always wanted to pick it back up again. Lastly, you do not need any type of science background to understand this book. It is a biography, not a science text at all.

Makes you think about all of the things you are breathing into your body on a daily basis and what havoc or benefit these things may have for you. It is a very interesting book and made me a bit of a clean freak, of course, cleaning doesn't do too much good and seems only to cause all of the dust particles to dislodge for me to inhale. But, what can you do? I highly recommend the book.

Dust. There's a lot of it. We don't know much about it. If you want to hear that repeated for a couple hundred pages, buy this book. There's a lot of airy speculation and to be fair, there are a few interesting pieces of trivia thrown in... but for the most part, this book drags.

There are some writers who can make any topic interesting, like Bill Bryson. I don't think Hannah Holmes is one of them. I gave up on the book about 3/4 of the way through. After the intro, it just felt like she was saying the same thing, over and over. Space dust? We don't know much about it! Desert dust? It's a mystery! Smoke? That's dust, too, and we also know very little about it! And on, and on...

'Dust' is an interesting choice for the title. I might call what Holmes is writting about 'matter', not 'dust'. She's not talking about the stuff you clean up with Pledge; she's talking about anything that ever gets broken down into little pieces, which is pretty much everything. That's not a plus or minus for the book; it's just meant to set your expectations better than I think her title does.

If her writing were more interesting, I would have added a couple more stars. If she could have provided more information, I might have gone up to 5 stars. But as it stands, the book gets 2 stars from me because it's not horrible and it has some interesting trivia, but I wouldn't go any higher. It's not at all compelling. I can't think of anyone I would recommend this to.

I am still stagestruck by the idea that a river of dust undulates above me, but the chapter one image of dusty glasses of water did arrest me. Initially, I found myself wanting to have only bottled water! When you wend your way through this fascinating book, you find that you become friends with your inherent destiny and dust to dust seems comforting. I grew up knowing that my ancestors were either buried or their cremated dust was placed around a family stand of giant walnut trees in Indiana, and the size of the trees impressed me then and still does today -- there was a visual continuation to the loss of so many of my loved aunts, uncles -- even my father. This book is a great reminder that the universe is a small or as large as your definition allows. Highly recommended. This is not a fast read because you will ponder and wonder, but it is sobering, entertaining and delightful in its allure to watch and test the winds.

Writing is excellent, although occasionally a certain "breathlessness" in tone becomes wearying. There are a number of unresolved scientific questions, such as the cause of asthma, and Holmes does a particularly good job with these. The material on dust and weather is fascinating. While Holmes' sympathies are clear, she remains objective. Despite Holmes' best efforts, however, the underlying material is not uniformly interesting. For example, there are some interesting and surprising causes of dust, and causes of ill health, but Holmes' comprehensive treatment also, necessarily, touches on the well known, amplifying with statistics and so on that just aren't that interesting.

Even in the "cleanest" house, your own "personal cloud" would have provided millions of invisible particles to inhale. Much of that fog will be your own cast off skin flakes. Your nose might filtre out the big ones. Others will have travelled along your bronchial tubes a way, to be picked up for delivery to your stomach. Yet others will elude the body's natural traps to drift into your lungs. Some will take up residence there, perhaps for good. And if your house is actually among those "cleanest" ones, it may not be good for your children.

In this compelling presentation, Hannah Holmes traces the origins of the dust around us. She explains how a distant star, exploding with immeasurable fury, sent a shock wave through our region of the galaxy. Adding its own burden of particles to a dust cloud already present, it disturbed whatever structure that cloud possessed. In time, the cloud coalesced into a star, with the leftovers becoming our solar system. Among the planets emerging in that system, was the one we call "Earth". The sun's and planets' formation, while removing much of the previous dust, left enough remains for the Earth to sweep up every day. Thus, dust from space adds to the multitude of dusts our living planet produces. More dusts, produced by one of the primate species on this world, provides further contribution to your "personal cloud".

As ubiquitous as dust is, Holmes' title is hardly misleading. Although we're surrounded by billions of tiny, microscopic particles, information about what they are, where they originated and how far they've travelled is usually an enigma. Volcanoes make them. Trees and plants shed them [we'll pass over the household pets]. Birds, cows and fleeting deer add to the envelope of dust around us. Even micro-organisms make a contribution by eating rocks and attacking living things. When they haven't settled somewhere and turned themselves into spores. Yet, discoveries about dust are only now coming to light. Dust crossing the Atlantic from the Sahara, while observed long ago, was only recently verified. Vast clouds rise from Asia to drift across the Pacific Ocean to sprinkle over North America. What do those particles carry as burden?

The author demonstrates vividly why we should know more about dust. Nearly a chapter is dedicated to the problems of asthma alone. For starters, it's not clear what causes asthma and how it works. What is clear is that in the industrialised nations the number of asthma sufferers is on the upswing. After her description of coal-burning housewives in China, why are nations with insulated houses and hydro for heating and cooking suffering bronchial problems? Part of the answer lies in who is suffering. It's the children. Partly because "superclean" houses have deprived children of the means to develop their immune systems to deal with their own "personal cloud". Another [wait for it!] is the sedentary life of school, TV and video games. Keeping the children indoors and relatively still makes that situation worse. More outdoor activity keeps the body active and helps flush the lungs and bronchial passages of invading particles.

Holmes has interviewed many scientists and dust observers in the course of making this book. She explains her research path with a list of printed works and Web sites to see what she has seen and what is becoming visible [Note, however, that Web sites listed in books tend to be quickly outdated. This list is no exception]. She presents the material well, provoking our interest and giving us inspiration to follow where she leads. It isn't enough to say "This book is for everybody". Since we are all surrounded by dust, since we all contribute to the dust density, and since it is, after all, the final state of the body, it behooves us all to see what Holmes has seen. In some cases, you will need to act on what you've found. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This review covers both World of Tiers, Volume 1 and Volume 2, but with the second volume, the later books don't even seem to mesh well with the rest of the books. It felt as though Farmer, lacking a better idea for new novels, just kept going with this series (at least in that regard, he may have been ahead of his time). In any case, it's a downhill road after three bad novels get you going on this rocky journey. So, if you're like me, and you HAVE to finish a series once you start it, just steer clear of this one, because it's not worth your time.

I read a number of posts in Amazon's SF discussion boards that praised both Farmer and this series of books. However, I have to agree with the minority that thought these books were horrendous. There is no foreshadowing, so they read like Farmer doesn't even know where they're going. Even though the stories are going somewhere, they generally feel like they lack a plot. The characterization is so weak, it's ridiculous. The action is breakneck, but it often seems pointless. And, as others have mentioned, characters who know nothing one minute suddenly know all a few (sometimes just one) paragraphs later.
Frankly, there was a lot of pulp fiction, with its paper cutter characters and heavy action, that was MUCH better than this series. If you're looking for that kind of stuff, you'd be much better off hunting down some Doc Savage books or EE 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series, or even some of Lester del Rey's stuff. That's classic with a certain level of quality.

I also have to mention that I slogged through Farmer's Riverworld series several years back. The writing quality was better, but again, I read 5 books, and I felt terribly disappointed and dissatisfied at the end. I felt then that the hype exceeded the goods, and The World of Tiers is pure garbage compared to the Riverworld books. Again, I'd heard fantastic things about the series, and I was determined to read them through to the end, in the hope of finding... something. I have enjoyed a few of his short stories that I've read in collections, but someone's going to have to have to glowingly review every single aspect of the book AND give it to me for free, before I read another book by this author. Don't believe the hype. Eleven books in two series was about ten and a half books too many, for me.

Farmer's five-book "World of Tiers" series is a classic. What an imagination Farmer has! I loved the village that slowly floats fifty-feet above the ground. It's held up by air bags. The "World of Tiers" series and the "River World" series are wonderful. Don't miss them.

Farmer is a big pulp adventure fan and tried his hand at it a number of times. I think that World of Tiers is his best attempt. The story is a great old fashioned adventure tale with a larger than life hero in a fantastic setting. Plot wise it deals with a man who discovers an apparently one way portal to an odd pocket universe. This universe consists of a planet made of several tiers like a wedding cake. Each tier contains its own distinct world. One is an idyllic world inhabited by creatures of greek myth, another is populated by medieval knights. The whole world is ruled by an overlord who resides at the top of the planet and the story revolves around our hero, eventually joined by a sidekick named Kickaha who also hails from Earth, attempting to get to the top of the world so he can get home. Like I said this is a great story, with another inventive concept from Farmer. The premise lets him explore several different pulp settings and there is a nice twist at the end which wraps things up nicely. There is a series of books which follows this one but they get progressively worse. Unless you're a completists, or dying to see some of the conceptual antecedents of Roger Zelazny's Amber series I'd recommend only bothering to pick up the first one.

The World of Tiers: Vol. One contains books 1, 2 and 3 of the series. What Philip Farmer writes best is strange worlds and strange creatures and action, action, action. All of it is found here in spades. The concept of multiple worlds controlled by highly advanced and immortal but petty and jealous "lords" gives him licence to write Doc Savage type pulp adventures on a grand scale. Not much time is spent on the past but in what happens to the characters in the here and now.

Book one intruduces us to Robert Wolff who stumbles upon a doorway to a new world. The word itself is the star of this book and the entire series is named for it as it is the World of Tiers. Not a round planet but a series of plateaus one on top of the other. Each plateau is basically a continent and instead of being separated by oceans are separated by 30,000 and 60,000 foot mountains which have to be climbed to reach the next continent. The Lord of this world lives atop it in a giant palace. Wolff gets to know this world with the help of the enigmatic Kickaha as he strives to save his new love. And Wolff is greeted by a surprize at the end of the journey.

Book two continues the adventures of Wolff as we see him fight for his life though world after world of his deranged father, again trying to save his love. This time he must team up with a cadre of back stabbing relatives, other Lords who would just a soon kill each other but must try to work together to kill their father. Farmer again gives pulp style action as all the characters are placed in near constant jeopardy through the book.

Book three occurs during the events of book two but back on the World of Tiers. This time Kickaha takes the stage as our main character, a place he keeps for the next 3 books as well. Strange things are afoot and the ever tricky Kickaha must fight and think his way though them. Hunted by the Half-horse who want his scalp and the evil Bellers who want him dead so they may take over all of humanity and all of the worlds of the Lords, he has his work cut out for him. With a little help from an unlikely ally he may win.

If you want rich character development you may want to pass. But if you like adventure and pulp action this is for you. And if you love alien words and creatures look no further. It really doesn't get much more out there than Philip Farmer, that's why people love to read him.

For some reason, Amazon is combining the reviews of both volumes of the World of Tiers instead of storing them separately under the actually-reviewed volume... So don't be confused by reviews of the second volume appearing under the first, and vice versa.

The first volume contains the first three books of the series, the Maker of Universes, the Gates of Creation, and A Private Cosmos. People looking for realistic romances or accurate portrayals of human emotion might want to look elsewhere; those in the mood for classic world-spanning science fiction with an emphasis on action have found their grail.

The first two books center on Wolff, a man who starts on Earth and is taken through a Gate to another world where strange Lords rule pocket universes of their own creation and wage a cruel and inventive war against each other. In addition to fabulous landscapes and strange beasts, we have many vintage science fiction ideas and death traps galore. The third book introduces the Black Bellers, creations originally intended to store human consciousnesses for transferring to new bodies, which have themselves evolved consciousness and now present a major threat to all life. Farmer's forte is putting characters in horrible situations and letting them work their way out with wits alone.

The imagery in this book is amazing as we travel through multiple universes, each conceived by a Lord as either a palace of pleasure or one giant planet of destruction. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a great, imaginative thrill ride.

The second volume concludes one of the most entertaining and original adventure/science fiction series in history. The emphasis is on action, conflict, and solving puzzles with the mind alone, said puzzles usually involving Gates that take the main characters to different worlds, often landing them squarely in the middle of a mastermind's death trap. How Farmer weaves his characters into and out of these death traps provided immense enjoyment for this reader.

The second volume, containing books 4-6 of the World of Tiers, focuses on Kickaha's battle against the Lord of Earth, Red Orc. Behind the Walls of Terra is one long action/chase scene as Kickaha lands on Earth after an absence of 25 years to chase down a threat to all life everywhere (the Black Bellers) and find his friends who may have been captured by Red Orc. In the second book in this volume, the Lavalite World, Kickaha and others have been transported to a shape-changing world where the planet itself molds and morphs and breaks apart (and rejoins) like the globules in a lavalamp. You will also encounter man-eating trees with insectoid eyes set among their branches and other products of Farmer's fertile imagination. The last book, More than Fire, is the showdown between Kickaha and Red Orc. In my opinion, the books just get better and better.

Don't expect the prose of Shakespeare or the complex and masterful plots of Ludlum; this is pure action/adventure with a healthy dose of trippy sci-fi ideas.

Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg traces the story of one Menocchio, a peasant from northern Italy who was put on trial (and eventually burned at the stake) for heresy by the Italian inquisition in the 16th century. He puts forwards parts of the transcription of the trial, and we realize that Menocchio has some quite heterodox (and not totally consistent) views on theology and cosmology, suggesting a number of eclectic sources for his ideas. For example, he viewed the Earth as a sort of giant cheese and the angels as worms coming out of the cheese (hence the book's title). How an Italian peasant, without presumably much access to books, would get such views, Ginzburg asks. He traces the bookshelves of Menocchio, but he is unable to come up with a clear answer. For example, even though his cosmology seems to have been influenced by a reading of the Koran, that was not among the books he possessed. Ginzburg finally suggests that Menocchio was a recipient of an ancient oral tradition, perhaps going back to the prechristian past, that was not totally suppressed by the church in rural areas. The book deals with an interesting subject, but is unfortunately hampered by Ginzburg's deliberately obscure writing style. He is out to show himself a postmodern writer, but a more conventional storytelling would have been better.

Researching within the archives of the Inquisition in northeastern Italy, Ginzburg came across a set of records describing the trials of an obscure miller from the Friuli area. Menocchio, as he was known, repudiated a wide variety of conventional positions on religion, on politics, and even on cosmology. The title of the book reflects Menocchio's unusual and somewhat naturalistic idea about the origin of the universe. In Counter-Reformation Italy, these ideas were not merely unusual, they were regarded as actually dangerous. Following his second trial, in which Menocchio was found to be backsliding, he was executed.
Ginzburg presents Menocchio as an autodidact synthesizing ideas from a variety of sources. Menocchio may have acquired some ideas from Anabaptist radicals who had been active in the Friuli. Other ideas seem to have come from an eclectic, though limited, array of books. As Ginzburg points out, this is an example of the impact of printing. It brought such books as Mandeville's travels and possibly even the Koran into the hands of a lowly miller. Most controversially, Ginzburg argues that many of Menocchio's ideas result from or were influenced by a common European peasant world view whose nature has been largely lost to us. This is an interesting hypothesis which Ginzburg defends very well but it can only be a hypothesis. Neither Ginzburg nor anyone else has the data to evaluate this idea properly. It may be simply that Menocchio was a village crank; an intelligent man with relatively unique ideas.
Regardless of the final interpretation, this well written book provides an interesting view of life in Counter-Reformation Italy.

The Cheese and the Worms has got to be the most ridiculously over-rated academic work of history of the past 3 decades. The author's central argument of the existence of an essentially unchanged Indo-European folk culture that spans both millenia and continents is both completely lacking in evidence and, from a theoretical view, patently ridiculous.

You can't simply sit down and find vague similarities between what a 16th century miller says and what some guy 2000 years earlier said in India and then, without any evidence or even a compelling argument of how the expressed ideas would have been transmitted, claim that this is proof positive that a substrata of Indo-European popular culture formed the predominant mentalite of most of the population of Europe throughout the latter ancient, medieval, and early modern periods. That's nonsense.

Besides the obvious paucity of evidence, the author has a seriously deficient understanding of how popular culture works. Popular culture, whether modern or ancient, is simply NOT static over millenia of time and over thousands of miles of geography. Did premodern popular culture evolve more slowly than culture today? Yes, it probably did, and it also long retained certain features (particularly features tied to technology constraints and the natural world) -- but it did change. In fact, careful historical analysis of popular culture during the early modern period, based on extensive use of archival material, has shown that pre-modern popular culture actually seems to evolve quite a bit more quickly than was previously thought. The notion of an unchanging rural European culture, developed by late 19th century intellectuals, simply doesn't hold up when confronted with the actual evidence. Economic patterns change, elements of elite culture sift down and are adopted/incorporated by the populace, different foods are introduced, marriage and family patterns shift, devotional practices evolve, and so on -- and here I am talking only of diachronic issues, let alone geographic diversity.

One cannot simply do as Ginzburg has done and find some aspect of early modern European popular culture and then, with no evidence whatsoever to support one's supposition, assume that this feature extends indefinately into the medieval past. When thinking about history, it is always of great importance never to assume that trends move in a straight progression -- they don't, they go up and down and this way and that. Heresy is a great example. There is always a certain amount of popular heresy present in medieval Europe, but the nature of the beliefs, the organization of the heretics, their geographic foci, etc. all changes over time.

The Cheese and the Worms was a success because it fit the Baby Boom generation of academics anti-hierarchical ideology, not because it was good scholarship. There was an element of that generation that wanted to believe that the 'true' popular culture of Europe had nothing to do with the church or literature or anything else. Instead, they wanted to believe that the 'true' culture consisted of some eternal Indo-European folkloric belief system and that peasants merely gave superficial lip service to the 'impositions' of the elites (Christian faith in particular). The Cheese and the Worms told them what they already wanted to believe, so they believed it.

If you want a book on medieval popular culture that A) was written by someone with both intelligence and common sense and B) actually has genuine evidence for what the author claims (imagine that!), read Medieval Popular Culture, by Aron Gurevich. Giovanni and Lusanna by Gene Brucker is also a good, light little book that provides a window into the culture of Renaissance townsfolk in Italy.

Don't waste your time with Ginzburg. He's not an historian -- he's an idealogue.

It is rare that we can see how common people thought 500+ years ago (another source is the Icelandic Sagas). This book shows that books were read by common people, not just the leaders. In this case, this miller got into a lot of trouble by reading. Lets hope that our current freedom of thought is not restricted in the future.

Borne of the microhistory genre, "The Cheese and the Worms" provides a glimpse into the life of a miller in medieval Italy. No ordinary miller is 'Menocchio', however, as he is inquisitioned for his radical religious philosophies. In a time and place where Catholicism was undoubtedly the religion of Europe, Menocchio harbored unique ideas about religious doctrine, the teachings of the Catholic Church, and man's purpose. Although some of his many ideas contradict others that he had, he was well-read and surprisingly well-educated for a man of his station. As Ginzburg says, though, we must look to the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press as being major catalysts for such learning and religious evolution. Within the microhistory genre, "The Cheese and the Worms" is most fascinating when we ask the question: Was this an isolated phenonmenon or was this a reflection of many people's views? The answer, I suppose, lies with Menocchio, but there is still much to be gleaned from this book.

Mario Livio, the scientific chief of the Hubble Space Telescope project, has written a book with a lot of potential. Considering the implications of recent discoveries that distant galaxies are farther away (and thus receding faster) than expected, with the concomitant suggestion of accelerating cosmic expansion, Livio ponders what this means for cosmological models. He concerns himself here with the junction of scientific theories and aesthetic concerns, the beauty and elegance that seem to have characterized some of the best theories (e.g. Newton's mechanics, Einsteinian general relativity). He suggests that 3 key criteria be used to evaluate the quality of a new cosmological theory-- symmetry, simplicity, and the Copernican principle (the "principle of mediocrity" or, generally, the idea that earth is nothing special in the universe).

Livio's book fails, unfortunately, for several reasons.

(1) One problem is technical: For all the emphasis that Livio puts on beauty and the relation of excellent scientific theories to great art, his book has oddly omitted the occasional figure with an example of such great art-- paintings, sculptures, illustrations, something that a reader can relate his ideas to.

(2) Livio is clearly enthusiastic about his field and his work with the Hubble Space Telescope, and this is a good thing overall. But he becomes too enamored with the recent discoveries and does not properly think through what they are implying. Rather than humbly admitting what astrophysicists and cosmologists constantly repeat in the journals-- the fact that we simply don't know what the current observations truly mean, and what is impelling them-- Livio overreaches here. We don't know the source of the "cosmological constant" that seems to be doing the accelerating, nor exactly how it manifests (or how it did so in the past). Yet Livio claims that it basically maps out the trend of cosmological progression, then proceeds in all kinds of unfounded detail about what it means. This comes out when Livio suggests that the future is now better known than the cosmic past-- an obviously ludicrous conclusion, since not just cosmological theories but fundamental ways of regarding the cosmos and basic assumptions change, and (especially recently) with rapidity. Moreover, no matter what process is discerned, it is simply not possible to say more than the vaguest thing about what it means overall since, in general, our understanding of the universe and spacetime is developing yet still nascent in so many ways. Most puzzlingly, Livio proceeds from this shaky basis to map out a picture of the cosmos which he claims to be beautiful, but is simplistic and downright dull. Which leads to the third problem:

(3) In choosing his criteria for evaluating theory, Livio introduces a regrettable bias. Desires for symmetry and simplicity have been present since Galileo's time. But Livio seems almost obsessed with the Copernican principle. I myself share his predilection for the principle, and would hope that theorists would tend to formulate cosmological models without having to invoke anything special about earth or what has happened here. But we cannot assume up front that this is going to be the case; the evidence has to decide that, not a personal preference. When Livio cites the Copernican principle it seems to be in response to the so-called anthropic principles, the "strong anthropic principle" suggesting some kind of life-promoting design in the cosmos and the "weak anthropic principle" stating the obvious-- life is here on earth, and there must be something about the physical constants and forces that is conducive to it. Livio is justifiably hesitant with regard to the strong version, but is in danger of neglecting the obvious fact of the weak version. Earth, in some sense, might seem "messy" and "incongruent" with regard to the criteria that Livio sets up, but the planet may indeed turn out to be special, especially when the enigma of earth's biology is considered. We should not assume that up front, but nor should we rule it out; cosmological theories have to be open to different possibilities. As one reviewer below pointed out, Aristotle's musical spheres picture was very beautiful, but it turned out to be flat wrong. Accurate theories in cosmology may turn out not to have simplicity to be comprehensive, and the Copernican principle may not be appropriate, at least in certain respects; we have to be open to that possibility, which suggests that Livio's Cosmological Aesthetic Principle might be a questionable set of criteria.

The author, Mario Livio is head of the Science Division at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Livio is a recognized world expert on novae, supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts to compact astronomical objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. In this book Livio a Hubble Space Telescope scientist introduces us to cosmology as a perfectly balanced universe that is accelerating, along with a deep understanding of key concepts and theoretical ideas. Livio guides his reader through the fundamental questions about human craving for order and then connects it to the order in the creation of universe. He also explores the implications of the universal physical laws for mankind and introduces new findings. Livio in this book embarks on discovering the new revolution under way in cosmology. In one of the most starting discoveries in cosmology in the century, astronomers last year determined that the universe is flying apart at an ever-faster rate. This 'acceleration' has smashed the popular idea of a perfectly balanced 'beautiful' universe and kicked off what Scientific American has proclaimed as a new revolution in cosmology. In his book Livio introduces new findings and explores their astonishing implications. Was Einstein's 'greatest blunder'--his idea of a cosmological constant--a brilliant insight after all? Is there a mysterious kind of energy that fills 'empty' space? Must we abandon the long cherished view of a beautiful universe? If so, the accelerating universe may prove as traumatic a finding as was the heretical notion that the Earth was not the center of the universe to Galileo's inquisitors. Livio elaborates on searching for beauty in the realm of cosmological theories. The book provides and overview of cosmology as well as an aesthetic argument. Livio is concerned with abstract beauty, stemming partly from the simplicity and symmetry of physical laws that are 'symmetrical' in that they do not change with an object's position in space and time. Livio associates such beauty with the 'Copernican principle' that humans do not occupy a privileged place in the universe (much as Copernicus discerned that Earth is not at the center of the solar system). In other words, a beautiful cosmological theory would not depend on wild coincidences or contrivances. Here, Livio enters controversial territory. There has been growing debate in recent years, even beyond the physics community, about whether some aspects of the cosmos, such as the strength of gravity, are 'fine tuned' for life, an if so what this signifies. It's sometimes held to have religious meaning, but could also mean, among other things, that there are multiple universes, or that we define life too narrowly. However, Livio's emphasis on aesthertics does little to further this debate. As he himself acknowledges toward book's end, the 'eye of the beholder' plays some role in determining what's beautiful, even in cosmology. Moreover, there's no guarantee the universe will match anyone's criterion of attractiveness. And at times, Livio's preoccupation with aesthetics seems overwrought. One unwanted finding in cosmology affects him badly: 'I had a feeling in my stomach similar to the one I had in 1975, when I heard that somebody had carried a knife into the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and managed to gouge twelve deep slashes into Rembrandt's masterpiece The Night Watch.' This book has an interesting goal, to combine cosmology and matters more closely associated with art. Unfortunately, The Accelerating Universe is less compelling that this dual focus might suggest. This book helps the reader to think, understand, draw, and evaluate patterns of order and chaos that is a part of this universe with its physical laws.