Black Holes: the Reith Lectures

A good summary of Hawking's works for laypersons (me). Might get back to this instead of A Brief History of Time if I ever need a reminder.

This was such a fascinating read. In this transcript of Stephen Hawking's BBC Reith lectures on black holes, you learn about this mind-boggling concept, but also about how difficult it is to study. Because there is no hard, physical proof of Stephen Hawking's theories (yet), they are of course abstract and therefore quite some food for thought. As a book person with a life-long interest in science that is unfortunately paired with exceptionally few talents for it, fully grasping every idea Hawking expressed is sadly nothing I could pride myself with. Even though I had to read some paragraphs several times, I enjoyed reading these transcripts immensely. I genuinely believe that Stephen Hawking made these complicated theories as understandable as possible, and you see how effectively he toned it down when you read the excerpt of his latest published paper at the end of the book. In addition to SH's unique style, the annotations, comments and explanations by David Shukman were incredibly helpful; and the illustrations provided the visualisation of Hawking's brilliant humour, which ultimately makes his writings so enjoyable. To anyone who is interested in black holes or the universe in general, even if they consider themselves "bad at science" (like me), I can only recommend this little book.

Fun ! It has some cool illustrations as well.