The last three minutes: conjectures about the ultimate fate of the universe - Softcover

Paul Davies is a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. He is the author of more than twenty books, including The Mind of God, The Cosmic Blueprint, Superforce, and Are We Alone? He won the 1995 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his contributions to religious thought and inquiry.

Although cosmology has developed into perhaps the most arcane and heavily mathematicized of academic specialities, you don't have to be a scientist to gaze at the night sky in search of answers. Hence the appeal of these fine companion books, the first in the publisher's very promising "Science Masters" series, which aims to tap into the potentially large market of curious, generally educated readers seeking intelligent but nontechnical treatments of current science issues. Barrow looks at Big Bang cosmology and does a particularly good job at explaining so-called "inflationary universe" theory, a difficult concept that others have handled far less deftly. Still, despite his occasional digressions into the literature of Arthur Conan Doyle, his writing is rather dry. Davies, by contrast, is more playfully conjectural, and the sheer audacity of some of his speculations makes for a more entertaining read. While other popularizations of basic cosmology have been published in recent years (e.g., Alan Lightman's Time for the Stars, LJ 11/15/92), Barrow and Davies are quality science popularizers, and both of their books merit recommendations. Davies's book is, however, the stronger due to the livelier writing and comparative uniqueness of his subject. [The third volume in the "Science Masters" series is Richard Leakey's The Origin of Humankind, reviewed below.-Ed.]-Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
--Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
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