Bang!: The Complete History of the Universe

Very comprehencive. Lots of great pictures and information. This book is geared to an adult mind. If you are looking for something to explain things to a younger mind you should keep looking. I, however, found it wonderful. (age 63)

I expected to receive the first edition (as advertised) - more valuable as a collector item. Anyway - it is very well written and a truly enjoyable reading. In just a couple of days I changed my mind about my very own existence (and of the Universe), and ultimately it will be present in every key aspects of my life, just as I expected, and just as any well written Queen song I recall. It's an intriguing poetry-science book - pretencious in title, but absolutetly acessible to ordinary people.

I heard a Brian May NPR interview shortly after this book was published and was fascinated by his passion for both rock music and astrophysics - quite a combination. I'd known that May studied the subject before Queen hit the big time but hadn't heard him speak about it before so this book, and his Doctorate degree came as quite a surprise. I was a bit skeptical about "Bang!! The Complete History of the Universe" but intrigued as well, especially when I saw the two co-authors, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, and I must say that the book did not let me down. "Bang!" is a quite comprehensive, but very approachable primer on the latest 'birth of the universe' theories. Written in a highly engaging, but not simplistic, style and beautifully illustrated, it is an outstanding introduction to astrophysics for the novice and a great review of current theories for the more knowledgeable. The fact that Dr. May's name on the cover may bring readers that would not normally pick up a book like this is just icing on the cake. Kudos to all involved!

Gene Simmons, a college graduate, has a degree in English; Paul Stanley graduated from New York's (FAME) High School of the Performing Arts--and was born without hearing in one year; Tom Scholz ("Boston") has a Master's Degree from MIT (Engineering), and Brian May (Queen), has co-authored a VERY readable, heavily illustrated interpretation of the history of our universe (with well-known astronomer Patrick Moore). My point: If you have children who sit around at home, listening to their iPod's, and think, for ONE minute, they have what it takes to succeed in this world being rock-stars, they're wrong. It takes intelligence, integrity, and an EDUCATION to succeed. None of the rock-stars mentioned above (and several others I could easily name) have succeeded in life, or business, without an education. Gene Simmons speaks four languages, fluently, Paul is TONE deaf in one year, and Brian May has a Ph.D. thesis in astro-physics. The next time your child says to you, "I want to quit school and play guitar," show him/her this book. Enough said. Excellent reading 5/5 stars--and it supports the notion that extreme intelligence can co-exist with rock music.

It has taken 13.7 billion years, but the Universe has finally produced a coffee-table quality book to commemorate the Big Bang and its consequences. _Bang! The Complete History of the Universe_ (Carlton Books) by Brian May, Patrick Moore, and Chris Lintott is not massive, as coffee-table books go, but its big format is perfect for the dramatic sorts of pictures that the Hubble Space Telescope or the larger Earth-bound telescopes can give us. It isn't just pictures, however. The text does an exemplary job of covering a huge amount of information. Necessarily, in 190 pages laid over with photos, details are skipped; on one page are both the disaster of the Permian Extinction 250 million years ago and the Cretaceous Extinction (wiping out the dinosaurs) 65 million years ago. There is the most detail in the earliest pages of the book, dealing with the events before around 700 million years ago, when there started to be discrete objects like galaxies that we could have actually seen, had we been there at that time. (In a sense, we do see them at that time, as the Hubble's lovely deep field images can show.) This is also the part of the book that makes the least sense to those of us who are stuck in a Newtonian world. There are books with fuller explanations of the strangeness of the Universe immediately after the Big Bang, but none quite so much fun. For fun is obviously part of the trip the three authors have taken, and it starts right on the cover, which above the book's title shows a huge, glowing, fragmented fireball, obviously the Big Bang in progress. "Our cover artwork is for fun only. There is no suggestion that any part of the Big Bang ever looked like this." Not only that, but it could never have been seen at such a distance, because there was no such distance; space did not exist except within that Bang. There are still gaps in our understanding of the Big Bang and how it produced all we are and all we see. "We must remember that it is impossible to prove a theory, and all one can hope to do is ensure it is consistent with all the available evidence." The evidence isn't all in, and they remind us, "...we would be amazed if in a few years time our book would not need to be substantially re-written." Given all the confirmatory data, it is hard to imagine that the big picture given here would be in error in any large way. After the main text of the book, there are a useful glossary, capsule biographies of the modern astronomers and cosmologists who have added to our understanding of the Big Bang, and a basic primer on practical astronomy that includes good directions about the topic "How to become an astronomer". This is upbeat, compared to the final chapter which has to do with the end of the Universe. Much has been made in the British press about the personalities who produced the book, although _Bang!_ would easily stand on its own without famous authors. The least known is Chris Lintott, a working astrophysicist who