Nice read. I did not know that its not exactly "energy" that is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. However, Brian Cox tends to be very scatter brained while discussing the issues of relativity and space-time curvature. He will sometimes wander from topic to topic while discussing something in-depth and it took a bit for me to keep track of where he was. I would have also liked to have seen more math. Cox spends several paragraphs each chapter apologizing to the layman about the two to three equations he presents in the succeeding sentences and then presents an equivalent to the Pythagorean theorem. I get it Brian, you are excited to share physics with the lay man, but you don't need to assume that no one has ever had calculus or, indeed, even algebra. Give us some credit and explain things with equations. If you want to pander, give the equation and explain in detail what it means so we can chew over it. ( )

Einstein’s theory of special relativity for dummies. Which, in this case, is probably most of us.
It will be hard for someone to come up with a simpler way to explain Einstein’s work - if you’re well versed on maths or physics, you will probably find this annoying or maybe too dumbed down. But this isn’t for you - it’s for all people that are curious about Einstein and our universe, can follow a logical discussion, but are not technical enough to follow a more detailed explanation. Not that this isn’t detailed, but Cox and Forshaw go to great lengths to hold your hand along the way and explain it all, using analogies and not a lot of maths to make their point.
And it works. You might feel a bit lost at times, but things will fall into place. And hopefully you will also be able to appreciate the beauty of Einstein’s ideas. ( )

I want to love a book like this, a book that guides the reader or listener to amazing scientific insights. Unfortunately I did not because the book's general attitude rubbed me the wrong way. Don't ask me why.

A few tangible things:

* The book (at least the edition I consumed) is dated. For instance, the Higgs boson was found by the Large Hadron Collider a couple of years after this book was written.

* It explicitly avoids even letting the user get a glimpse of any complicated math. Just to be able to pretend everything is very simple. A lot is very simple. All is not very simple.

* It avoids mentioning things that complicates the current picture, except when saying over and over again that some day we might figure out even better theories and models. For instance, if time is like any other dimension in spacetime, why can't it move backwards?

All in all it dumbs down things a bit too much. I'm probably just not in the book's target audience, so what book should I read instead? ( )

Not exactly light reading but definitely fascinating. I have a feeling ill probably come back to it with a notepad at some point to get a better grasp of some of the more complex aspects. ( )

A very good book explaining a non really intuitive topic. I liked it more than his "quantum universe" book and I think it's much more easiert to understand. ( )