The Universe in a Nutshell

Published in 2001, The Universe in a Nutshell is Hawking's richly illustrated follow-up to A Brief History of Time, and for many readers it is the more enjoyable of the two to hold and to browse.

More visual, more current

Where the 1988 book leaned almost entirely on words, this one is full of diagrams, illustrations and visual analogies designed to make hard ideas approachable at a glance. It also brings the science up to date, devoting real attention to the developments that had moved to the centre of theoretical physics by the turn of the century: string theory, the idea of extra dimensions, "branes," and the ongoing search for a complete theory that would unite all the forces of nature.

Hawking structured the book so that chapters could be read in almost any order, more like exploring a set of connected rooms than following a single corridor, which suits its browsable, illustration-led style.

Reception

The book was widely praised and won the 2002 Aventis Prize for Science Books, a recognition that it succeeded in making genuinely advanced ideas accessible. It stands as a natural companion to A Brief History of Time: where that book introduced the questions, this one shows where physics had taken them, and does so with notably more colour and imagery.

Who it's for

Readers who enjoyed the first book and want to go a little further, and anyone who learns best with strong visuals, will get the most from it. The concepts are more advanced in places than in the original, but the illustrations carry a great deal of the load.