The Black Hole War: My Battle to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

If this is your first layman's physics book you may want to try something else, but those who read about physics often will probably enjoy it. The book contains a lot of fascinating discussions and explanations making the physics of black holes, the holographic principle, and some aspects of string theory a little more graspable. The story is initially engaging but I lost interest toward the end as it delved deeper into string theory. My biggest complaint would be the tone of the book; It can be at times over-dramatic about the "war" and Hawking and physics in general.

I found this audiobook to be very entertaining, packed with so much information that I'll have to listen to it several times. The narrator was so well prepared that he sounded like he might have been the author. If you love science, you've got to love this book, because Susskind interweaves the work of scientists old and new. If you're religious, you might feel offended by Susskind's up-front atheism, but I found it refreshing.

Loved it! This was a wonderful audiobook. Only part I didn't really like was that the formulas were read out loud slowly... it was just akward. This is where it would be cool to have sync-with-images audiobook so you could see the formulas on your ipod as you listened.

Suskind does a good job explaining Quantum Mechanics and String Theory while chronicling his adventure battling with Stephen Hawking and the rest of the Physics community about black holes. Also get a strong sense of Susknid's charachter. Great narration.

If you are serious about trying to understand some of the most complex and amazing concepts of quantum physics without having to learn all that pesky math the book is for you. I look forward to re-reading it.

An excellent book. The authors knowledge appears to be unquestionable. As an "amateur", I was sometimes confused on some subjects but overall understood most of the explanations. The audio book would be more pleasant to listen to if the tracks were started at the end of a word instead of in the middle of them.

This was the best audiobook I've listened to! Mr Susskind assumes very little physics knowledge but still manages to not talk down to the listener and clearly explain complex concepts. In addition, he has many fascinating, illuminating stories about many of the great luminaries of the physics world, from drinking a beer with Feynman in a small bar in NYC in the 1960s to touring San Francisco's steep hills with Stephen Hawking. This was a great audiobook!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read many more books on the same topic. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it seems that he talks down to the reader a lot in this book.

This is a great book to hear. Susskind is a good story teller while delivering a complex subject in wonderful metaphors.

This is a strange book that, it seems to me, reeks of envy of Hawking and has an astounding lack of perspective. The author goes on for quite a while discussing the mathematics and physical features of black holes in anti-de Sitter space. He does throw in a line at the end about it all having nothing to do with OUR universe...but why then go on and on in a book for a non-scientific audience? This war was not very thrilling (and not much of a war). The author was indeed completely correct about conservation of information in black holes, the rest of the book is filler, two words would have sufficed "I Win!"