Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Reviews by Peter Best

Order Reviews by:
You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe
by Christopher Potter
Some good answers to the Big Questions! (6/26/2009)
As a physicist of old, this book is a revelation as it maneuvers so easily between many technical subjects - in fact it reminds me of Peter Watson's "A Terrible Beauty" - a favourite- in its breadth and fluidity. It is not a "popular science" book if you expect oversimplification; it does give many insights into the ways and perils of the "scientific method". The use of orders of magnitude to take you up and down the scales of space and time works well. The book has enough surprises and short anecdotes to entice a reader to keep going (and delving for themselves).

My one disappointment was that Christopher Potter looked fully at most aspects of "You are here" except the "You". I would have loved an extra chapter or two with him delving through recent areas such as "interpersonal neuropsychology" to look at what is involved in the creation of self and perception, both in childhood when we start wondering about the universe and in older age when we have the luxury of pondering our own fuzzy path through life.

But I am heartily recommending the book to friends who appreciate an enjoyable read and explorations in personal space-time.
  • Page
  • 1

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.