String Theory Demystified

First of all, this book is not for everybody. It's not for the pop-science reader, it contains far too much mathematics to be of any use for him. It's not for the professional scientist seeking in-depth understanding either. If you are either type of reader, you're better off reading something else. Every book has its readership target, and this book found one appreciative reader in this reviewer. I have a background in engineering, so I'm familiar with differential equations, complex analysis, quantum mechanics. I never took any postgrad physics, so given my interest in physics I've had to study tensor analysis, quantum field theory and general relativity on my own. After getting some exposure to those subjects, I felt I could tackle an introduction to strings, and thought this book would be a good way of quickly getting the broad concepts. I found the book easy enough to be readable, and challenging enough to learn something from. If you have a background similar to mine, you will love this book. If you do have this sort of background, then you'll find it to be a very good summary of string theory. It will give you the broad concepts without skimping on the mathematics. It will prepare you for texts like Zwiebach and Polchinsky. There are flaws in the book, however. There are still way too many typos in the book, and some of the examples are stepped through in steps that ought to be obvious to anyone at this level, while others are not explained in sufficient detail. The issue of typos seems to be an ongoing one with the Demystified series, but thankfully this particular book seems to suffer from fewer typos than some of the others. Aside from that, this reviewer found it a very useful introduction to the subject, and would strongly recommend it to anyone in a similar situation. However, it may not be suited to pop-science readers or professionals.

The book is interesting. Very good for an overall view of the subject, but it has to be taken carefully, since if one wants to say that "knows" string theory, this book alone will not give that. But if you are from another field (e.g. experimental nuclear physics) just trying to understand what this theory is all about, then the book is perfect.

I actually love the book, its format, and its focus. Imagine that your task is to take Polchinski's textbook on String Theory and compress both volumes to 320 light pages or so. You have to include some basics of GR, QFT, abstract classical mechanics but also the CFTs, bosonic strings, light cone gauge, T-duality, symmetries, RNS superstring, heterotic strings, D-branes, AdS/CFT, black holes. But you also add some material that was not yet fully covered in Polchinski's book such as tachyon condensation on D-branes and the speculative field of string cosmology, among others. I think that if you realize your task well, you will end up with a book very similar to McMahon's book. As a kid or undergrad, I would actually love the playful format of the book, the icons and big headlines. In fact, I like it even now. It's the format that succeeds to attract the reader's attention and give him or her the (semi-realistic) feeling that the knowledge needed to fully master string theory is of encyclopedic character and "learnable" in a finite time. Although the brevity of many explanations will clearly make it insufficient for all readers to understand the true origin of all results and steps, this is a book focusing on real, solid scientific arguments. This is a simplified but technical, not popular, book that won't overwhelm you with postmodern philosophical babbling, trying to convince you that it can replace the calculations and lead you instantly to "big" conclusions without any hard work. It is a book that shows the actual correct calculations and derivations, albeit in a simplified form. Most importantly, the answers are pretty much universally correct, as far as I could check, and they uniformly cover the basic topics that are important for actual researchers in modern high-energy theoretical physics. If you're a college student, high school student, or a mathematically skilled "semi-outsider" who is bright enough to learn advanced theoretical physics, please ignore the other reviewers who clearly have no idea what theoretical physics actually is, and buy this book. You may like it, too.