A Briefer History of Time

By: Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow

Narrated by: Erik Davies

Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

From one of the most brilliant minds of our time comes an audiobook that clarifies his most important ideas.

Stephen Hawking’s worldwide best seller A Brief History of Time remains a landmark volume in scientific writing. But for those who have asked for a more accessible formulation of its key concepts - the nature of space and time, the role of God in creation, and the history and future of the universe - A Briefer History of Time is Professor Hawking’s response.

Although “briefer”, this audiobook is much more than a mere explanation of Hawking’s earlier work. A Briefer History of Time both clarifies and expands on the great subjects of the original and records the latest developments in the field - from string theory to the search for a unified theory of all the forces of physics. Thirty-seven full-color illustrations enhance the text and make A Briefer History of Time an exhilarating and must-have addition in its own right to the great literature of science and ideas.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2005 Stephen Hawking (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Readers will come away with an excellent understanding of the apparent contradictions and conundrums at the forefront of contemporary physics....Throughout these discussions, the authors maintain the same wry, lively tone that made the original Brief History such a delight." (Publishers Weekly)

Is Hawking objective?

For the most part I believe, from my lesser understanding of the subject matter, that Hawking has presented much of the scientific material fairly and quite well. However, when he strays off his field of excellence he betrays a bias, in this case the old clich? of the Catholic Church suppressing science. I will not address those arguments again here but suffice it to say that Hawking knows which side of the argument he is on and he is leading somewhere with it, as his "who needs God?" conclusion demonstrates.

As each opportunity to imply that the Church squashed free scientific enquiry presented itself (and was taken) I began to expect Hawking to omit the name of the person whose theory the Big-Bang was. This would have been particularly odd as Hawking had scrupulously acknowledged everything else. To not accredit a theory as core to his text as the Big-Bang would surely be unthinkable. And yet he did.

You see in the midst of all his "objective" writings and scrupulous acknowledgement of who came up with what Stephen Hawking omits to mention that the Big Bang theory was proposed in 1927 by a Belgian priest named Georges Lemaitre. His theory was not initially well received by such lumiaries as Einstein himself, who said "Your calculations are correct, but your grasp of physics is abominable." Six year's later Einstein effectively retracted that sentiment after listening to a Lemaitre presentation and said "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." Meanwhile many in the scientific community still objected to the notion of a moment of creation.

To me this is interesting history and Hawking's conspicuous failure to accredit this theory or mention Einstein's reaction to it demonstrates a failure of objectivity that makes one question whether he would show the same bias towards pet theories in his science.

Briefer, briefer review!

Valuable and intriguing information. Thoroughly enjoyed listening and learning so much about the universe and world around us!!!

Very Interesting

This is a very intersting book and really gives a person an insight with Physics and many other harder science subjects. I will listen to this off and on just for refreshing and to really try to understand things I might of missed the first or second or third time. :)

very enjoyable.

loving this book
it's mind bending
l listen and re-listen often to go over concepts and theories
gave copies to my kids

One of the best of its kind

Really loved this book. Even though I'm pretty well versed in the current scientific understanding of the world, it was an extremely interesting read.

Not what I was looking for

Not what I was looking for, but will be helpful for anyone in search of an introduction to basic concepts of astronomy and physics.

Science I can get!

As a teacher, I know that it's one thing to understand complex ideas; it's quite another to articulate them clearly to someone who lacks a good frame of reference for understanding. Hawking's real genius is not in his knowledge and understanding of complicated ideas, it's in his ability to simplify them so that a guy like me, who dropped high school physics because it seemed so much like pure magic, is able to understand them on a basic level.

Learned some good stuff.

This is a good book for anyone who is interested in a summary of how modern physics came to be and a general explanation of the theories of modern physics. I do think I could have done without the attempts to try to explain why or how God could have been involved - that is why I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars. Those attempts were inserted in a brief disjointed manner that didn't fit with the flow or purpose of the book.

A great read for everyone

Loved this explanation of the universe, so easy to understand and so interesting. I highly recommend this book.

A Good Book Overall

The book is enjoyable, and is almost like a synopsis of its parent book. An understanding of physics aids in the comprehension of this book. I'd recommend this book to those who already have an interest in physics.