Title: The Grand Design
Author: Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Type: Non-Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 256
Rating: 8/10
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow – The Grand Design
The Grand Design promises to offer “new answers to the ultimate questions of life”, and boy, does it perform. With this book about reality, alternate histories and the theory of everything, amongst other topics, Hawking proves a point – he’s still got it, the sly old dog, he’s still as sharp as ever and his ability to explain complex concepts is, if anything, more prominent here than anywhere else.
Layout has clearly been a concern here – the print is large enough to make long words easy to read, and there are pictures and illustrations dotted throughout to help keep you focused. My only gripe would be with the weird, glossy paper that the pages are made from, but you can’t be picky when it comes to a book like this – that’d be like dismissing the Beatles because you once saw Paul smoking a cigarette.
Hawking’s thought-processes, elevated elegantly with the input of Mlodinow, are pretty much a continuation of what he set in motion with the release of A Brief History of Time, and you can expect answers (or at least, hypotheses) to when and how the universe began, why we’re here and whether the deepest questions that philosophers have ever posed can be answered by science. It’s a fascinating, easy to understand, mind-expanding read, and one that I heartily recommend.
So get out there and grab yourself a copy now – no excuses.
Stephen Hawking
