[.ca] Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the ... (ISBN 0385477813)

Not a very good book:
I have read a number of books at this point on grand unification and theory of everything. This book in particular deals with superstrings as a means by which to unify the physical forces. From a personal standpoint I do not like superstring theory as the answer to grand cosmological problems. The readability is also poor and the writing is disjointed. Last, I prefer the works of Martin Rees and Kip Thorne to Kaku. Again this book is very disjointed and does not even present superstrings all that well. Spend your money elsewhere, on the afformentioned authors, or check out some Feynman books if it is unified force type of stuff.

Interesting at Times, but Leaves You Wanting More:
Beyond Einsten tells the story of the quest to find a "Theory of Everything" which would unite the four forces of nature into a single force. Kaku describes the past attempts by Einsten and others to find this elusive theory. He then proposes Superstring theory, which may or may not be the theory of everthing. I found this book is confusing in parts. For example, sometimes Kaku would introduce a new term and not explain it adequately. Then he would go and use that terms umpteen times and I'd wonder what the hell it meant. If you don't have a background in physics you may have a hard time understanding it too. Also, I wanted more information about the specifics of superstring theory. He explains briefly about how it may unite the four forces but is light on details. An ok book, but not as good as his others.

I was disappointed:
Numerous occasions of poor writing and some wrong statements of fact combine to disappoint me. Some of the more egregious examples are these. On page 37 we read "astronomically small", which is an oxymoron. On page 68 we read "billions of chemical compounds that were known to exist." There are only about 20 million known at this time. On page 82 we read "...literally picking one's self up by one's bootstraps..." The bootstrap business is a figure of speech, not a literal statement of fact. (It is also a cliché). On page 136 we read "The vice-like grip of the black hole's gravitational field is so great that nuclei are ripped apart..." I believe it is the high temperature, not the pressure, that dissociates the nucleons. On page 185 the aliens are said to reply "We understand what cobalt-60 is. We know which element has sixty protons in its nucleus." Cobalt still has only 27 protons. It's hard to trust a book that has such obvious mistakes.

Good introduction.:
This book is a well explained introduction to recent speculation in the field of astronomy and physics, more particularly superstrings and supersymmetry. Here lays his hope to find a 'Theory of the Universe'. Most of the book tells us the story of 20th century physics (special and general relativity, quantum mechanics). I missed the swinging style of a John Gribbin for instance. For the content, I prefer the books of John Barrow 'Theories of everything', Martin Rees 'Before the beginning' and Brian Green 'The elegant universe'. I must say that the book 'Visions' by the same author is of another calibre.

Fuzzy!:
This book reads well and it is easy to grasp, however there is little focusing on the various subjects especially string theory in general. Overall for the beginner and casual reader this is a good book.