Introduction to Black Holes, Information and the String Theory Revolution, An: The Holographic Universe

If you are interested in black holes, but don't have a rock-solid math/physics background, this is NOT your book. Buy Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program) instead. If you are a physics student familiar with relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and interested in knowing more about the Bekenstein bound and the intriguing holographic principle, this is YOUR BOOK. However, save yourself some money and buy the paperback edition: An Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe (I bought the hardcopy edition, but see below). There is no other introductory text that goes as deep into holographic theories and entropy bounds as this one. Furthermore the book is well-written, contains clear illustrations, and appeals to the reader's intuition. Would be close to 5 stars, would my copy not have deintegrated (the binding quality is so poor that after some reading the hardcover gets detached from the pages). Hence the above advise to buy this book in paperback edition for well less than half the price.

This book is an exciting review of the most important ideas that have emerged in our quest to understand black holes - essential labs that tell us a lot about quantum gravity and the deepest mysteries of the Universe. It is an introduction but an introduction for a person who is serious about black holes, not just a person who wants to impress his friends with two emotional sentences about them! Nevertheless, ordinary people should give it a try, especially plumbers because the author is also an ex-plumber whose father was a plumber and wanted his son to continue in the tradition. It just happened that Susskind also became one of the top 5 black hole experts in the world. Please don't ask me to tell you who are the remaining four because it could be a tough task. He's been waging a war against some superficially acceptable but wrong ideas - such as the information loss - and he became the winner. Meanwhile, he also co-discovered string theory and other things. I don't know James Lindesay too well, so let me talk about Susskind as the author. At the beginning of the book, you are presented with the geometry of the Schwarzschild black hole - especially what is its causal structure. Equations but also pictures are included. Various coordinates are used to find out who can escape from where etc. i.e. what is the causal diagram. Following chapters are dedicated to quantum fields in this curved background and particle production, Unruh radiation and density matrix etc. When they have everything, they can finally explain why black hole evaporate (they're not quite black) and why they have a temperature and entropy. Charged black holes differ in some details and they are explained, too. But all these semiclassical pictures are so 1970s. The laws of Nature must be unitary so something must be slightly different. Susskind dedicates more than 1/2 of the book to the most modern interpretations and insights that have occurred in our research of string theory and closely related paradigms such as stretched horizons, baryon number violation by black holes, complementarity, holography (he is a co-father of both), related entropy bounds, the concise description of black holes in Maldacena's AdS/CFT, and light-cone descriptions of black holes. If you want to know how black holes really work according to the best science we have as of 2008, read this book in detail. The author is one of the funniest top physicists and he writes in a no-nonsense style.

The book is a scientific diary which presents some theoretical results of the physics of black holes (often peculiar, like the black hole horizon having electrical resistance of 377Ohm/square) and introduces the holographic principle. Conceptually the level of the presentation is high but mathematics is kept at minimum which makes the book an excellent reading for anyone with a solid background in quantum mechanics and relativity. The book is very clearly written.

Indeed, I agree with the previous reviewer: this book is certainly not for laymen, however it is a wonderful exposé of the "holographic universe", i.e. information contained not in volumina of objects but in their surfaces, such as black holes, which are maximum-entropy objects. In order to understand the book, you'll need a BSc in physics or mathematics with a keen interest in physics. Knowledge of Einstein's theory of general relativity might be of use, but not strictly neccesary. It's written nicely, it is up to date, and a pleasure to study.

The title of the book reminds me of the classic physics question: yes, this equation can be expanded for small values of the parameter. But before you whip out that expansion, first tell me what "small" means in this context? I would venture to say that the title of the book is a misnomer on some level. This is a technical book, there's no question about that. If you are not a physicist, you will not understand a single page. When I say "technical", what I specifically mean is you should have: * A course on general relativity. The first page dumps the Schwarzschild metric on you. You should be familiar with, say, the Faraday tensor (which any decent GR or even SR course should cover). * A course on quantum field theory. The book very quickly goes into the massless free Klein-Gordon equation in a Schwarzschild background. You should know the basics of string theory. After all, that's what the book is partially about! * A course on thermo/statistical mechanics. The book delves into black hole entropy. Be prepared to blow the dust off your partition functions. In that sense, this book is not an introduction, and is CERTAINLY not for the layperson. Now that I've disparaged this book enough, I'll tell you why this is a phenomenal book that deserves a place on your bookshelf (again, for certain values of "you"). This book is a gentle introduction to the classical and quantum mechanical principles of blackholes. It was beautifully written. It may very well be one of my favorite books. When I say "beautiful", I don't mean beautiful like Wald's classic but impenetrable book on GR. Imagine David Griffiths or Matt Visser writing a book for mid-level grad students going into high energy physics. They go deeply into the different coordinates used for blackhole spacetimes and Penrose diagrams, but in a hand-holding way that emphasizes knowing-by-visualization rather than knowing-by-calculation. Yes, the calculations are all there, but the authors are not content with that. They go into the nitty-gritty type of understanding that seems to be absent in most books on this subject. Which brings me to the next point: diagrams. This book may contain more diagrams than any other comprable book I've seen (except for the behemoth called "Gravitation", but with the case of the telephone book, half the diagrams are wasteful; do we REALLY need to see a picture of firecracker's world line or yet another picture of Newton?). The diagrams are numerous and effective. Kudos. I wish more authors paid as much attention to visualization. The authors took a very difficult subject and wrote an extremely accessible and well written book on it. If you are a student of high energy physics, or simply want to see someone masterfully write on the subject, this book deserves a place on your bookshelf. Again, for certain values of "you". I'm still in the process of reading this book, but one fault I can find is that I wish the index was a bit more extensiv