The Road to Reality
If you ask me to recommend the only one semi-popular book about modern physics that has everything in it and explaining all necessary mathematics too I would not hesitate to point to Roger Penrose’s book:
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
It is not a light read and requires some mathematical maturity. It has more than 1,100 pages and my first attempt to read it in 2005 when I bought a hardcover edition lasted until the page 160. Since then I read many other popular and semi-popular physics and math books and now feel more confident. I started reading it again last week from the first page before tackling with The Anthropic Cosmological Principle book which is heavy on general relativity and it reads very well now. Therefore I would recommend not to give up reading this book and even read it couple of times to thoroughly understand various mathematical ideas and their connection with physics. It is well worth it if you are keen to understand modern science. There is no other science book with the same breadth and depth covering both physics and mathematics. It looks like it springed various smaller books like The Comprehensible Cosmos I read earlier.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -
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