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 -
AnnouncementsComing Soon:
Management Bits: An Anthology from Reductionist Manager
Debugging Notebook: Essential Concepts, WinDbg Commands and Tools
Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers
New Magazines:
Debugged! MZ/PE: MagaZine for/from Practicing Engineers
New Books:
Memory Dump Analysis Anthology: Color Supplement for Volumes 1-3
Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 3
First Fault Software Problem Solving: A Guide for Engineers, Managers and Users
x64 Windows Debugging: Practical Foundations
Also available:
Windows Debugging: Practical Foundations
DLL List Landscape: The Art from Computer Memory Space
Dumps, Bugs and Debugging Forensics: The Adventures of Dr. Debugalov
WinDbg: A Reference Poster and Learning Cards
Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 2
Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1
New Children's Book:
October 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
[…] of the founder of category theory. The similar overview of modern mathematics can be found in The Road to Reality book and the recent 1000 page “The Princeton Companion to Mathematics”. One note that […]
October 13th, 2008 at 11:21 am
[…] The Road to Reality […]
January 30th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I’ve decided to reread it again in 2009 because some topics like GR and QED was not clear for me from the first full reading.
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
[…] Not Even Wrong and the Trouble With Physics that criticise the theory. Last year I also read The Road to Reality that has a few chapters devoted to String Theory critics. However I always wanted to understand […]
May 20th, 2009 at 9:41 am
[…] while approaching the end of the book. The algebraic treatment of tensors is refreshing after The Road to Reality which uses mostly graphical notation devised by Roger Penrose. I finally […]
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:53 pm
[…] by Penrose tensor notation encountered in The Road to Reality book I’d like to introduce Visual Dump Objects (VDO) notation to depict and communicate […]
May 28th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
[…] and mathematics behind physical concepts discussed in more popular books that I read before such as The Road to Reality, Deep Down Things and The Great Design, Not Even Wrong and the Trouble With Physics and The […]
May 31st, 2009 at 12:13 am
[…] of QFT. Upon its arrival I immersed myself into it and in my opinion the first volume is like The Road to Reality but more mathematically oriented with proofs, numerous examples, historical notes, generous […]
September 28th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
[…] classification. When thinking I recalled a three worlds diagram in Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality book depicting the Platonic mathematical, the physical and the mental. So I came up with Software […]