Yasiru's Reviews > The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

As accurate a title as can be for this tremendously ambitious behemoth. I very much enjoyed the masterful laying of a mathematical framework when first I came across it (the first dozen or so chapters if memory serves; hence the rating, as well as for the aforementioned ambition in the task- I think this is a right way to go, though popular expositors seldom venture down this route), as Penrose does it so efficiently (and naturally too, so that the layman wouldn't shove it aside in disgust after hardly a half dozen pages, and for the price even that handful of beginning chapters are worthwhile). Something of an idiosyncratic emphasis might be noted in these chapters, but it doesn't take away from the breadth of the account and can't really be faulted because it's setting things up for what follows.

I never actually got to much of the 'meat' of it- which is the physics (and so unfortunately can't remark on it). I'd hoped to, but then I realised I was just putting it off out of apprehension that I'd find myself feeling the lack of formal first year physics at university (something I gleefully escaped as early as I could in favour of my chosen field- pure mathematics). This is probably an unfounded concern, since skipping ahead to chapter 17 on spacetime, I was able to follow the account, but nonetheless I closed the book at this point.

Perhaps I'll revisit it sometime with a few other references handy should I need rescue. This would certainly be worthwhile if you can give this the time and energy required; you're sure to come out richer in knowledge, in a way almost no other popular account of science can impart.