I’d like to read Hawking’s book, but there are conflicting reviews about its readability. Does one need a working knowledge of astrophysics or even basic physics to understand it?
With the caveat that I read it (or at least tried to) nearly 30 years ago, so my memory may be a little fuzzy:
As laymen go, I’d like to think that I have a reasonably good grasp of the basics of physics. I can wrap my head around both general and special relativity, I’m reasonably knowledgeable about astronomy (though not necessarily astrophysics), and I have good reading skills and a strong vocabulary.
Even so, I found it to be a difficult read, and I’m pretty certain I couldn’t follow half of what he wrote about.
I am an avid reader with little formal science education. I do read a lot of popular science books. When I finished A Brief History of Time, with great effort and almost no enjoyment, I remember thinking that this book had to be the most-purchased, least-finished best-seller ever.
It is a difficult and unpleasant read, in my opinion.
If you are concerned you could go with A Breifer History of Time.
Not a book I have read recently, but I remember that it is not a physics textbook, and that the author explicitly apologizes for the lack of equations.
I don’t recall any unpleasant or bad writing. (Or anything difficult–this is not a schoolbook with exercises.)
I’m a lawyer - not strong in math. But have always been interested in cosmology and read a lot of “science” non-fiction. Wife has long been interested in astronomy - we travelled for the eclipse, and intend to visit the meteor crater this fall. So I’m not COMPLETELY ignorant and disinterested.
I tried to read ABHOT twice. Each time, I was cruising along, until I hit one place I just couldn’t grok. Pretty sure I could pull the book off the shelf an go right to the point.
I’ve long offered ABHOT as the book which was most widely purchased, but least widely read. And of the people who DID read it, I question how many of them understand it.
Like so many others, I tried to read it and failed. It is poorly written, quite apart from the concepts involved.
Covering much of the same territory, I found The Collapsing Universe (1977) by Isaac Asimov to be very well-written, involving and easy to understand…and I read it in high school.
Yeah, I think the problem is, “celebrity” physicists tend to be really good at analogizing their “science-y” stuff so the layman can wrap their head around it.
I never got the sense Mr. Hawking was very good at that (which is why I never read the book).
Get the audiobook.
I read it, liked it quite a bit and didn’t find it all that difficult.
This has been measured, kinda half-jokingly, kinda not, in a number of ways. A common measure looks at citations to specific passages - the closer to page 1 this # is, the more likely that the book was unread by most citers. Piketty’s *Capital in the 21st Century * was the winner with the furthest page cited being page 26.
However, the measurement is known as the Hawking Index, which gives you an idea where this concept arose. 
I like to think I’m good at grasping the Big Idea, even if I don’t always get the details.
Even with that attitude, I gave up after Chapter 5. In other words, I didn’t even get to black holes, much less the origin of the universe. I told my wife, “This isn’t physics. It’s metaphysics (i.e., philosophy.)”
I can’t believe that it has been 30 years since ABHoT was published–no wonder I don’t remember any actual details about the book.
This was my experience as well. Chefguy, I would at least give it a shot if you are curious.
ETA: I’m not an expert in physics by any means. Just a couple of college level intro classes and some reading on my own. Certainly no Astrophysics other than popular explanations.
I very much agree with this.
It is not a great starter / layman’s book. I would recommend something like John Gribbin’s book 13.8, which takes historical and scientific looks at how we’ve figured out how old the Universe is.
I remember that there was one formula in there and everything was quite well explained. Easy read.
I am not good with math. I found the concepts challenging but not in the same way (as in “hopelessly lost and in way over my head”) as I would have been if I had picked up an explanation that relied on mathematical equations or expressions to explain that subject matter.
I should go back and reread it to see if I get the same takeaway, though.
He undoes the general widespread understanding of the Big Bang. The shape of spacetime, not the shape of space, approaches a singularity as you go back in time. That’s significant when you’re “going back in time”. The thing you’re “going back in” is bending sideways out from under you, curving as you approach the singularity.
This makes me want to re-read the book—I read it a long time ago, and I probably didn’t understand everything at the time, but I can’t recall it striking me as impenetrable (meaning I could skip over what I didn’t understand and still seemed to get the bigger picture). I wonder what I’d make of it these days.
Maybe we could do a book club kind of thing—try and tease out what Hawking meant in difficult passages. I’m sure the other physicists on the board would also be willing to provide some commentary.
I read it but thought it was confusing. Maybe he made it too simple when he tried to write to the layman.
I remember reading it quite a long time ago, when I was maybe 12-14 years old. I recall being very excited about the ideas and it definitely pushed me along my path of interest in science, physics, and cosmology. It’s likely that some of it went over my head but I don’t think it bothered me. I should reread it, though I’m not sure what it would tell me, since it is so hard to separate the ideas that I learned at the time vs. those that I only absorbed later. I don’t recall much specifically other than it introducing me to the “you can’t go north of the north pole” argument for the Big Bang, and first exposing me to spacetime diagrams.