really makes a good case, and Nasrudin can't restrain himself. There's this old Nasrudin story, where he's somehow ended up as judge in a court case. Smolin's The Trouble with Physics, which I read much more recently, suggests that string theory is in big trouble, and right now I am more tempted to side with Smolin. When I read this book, I remember thinking it was pretty interesting, but I am surprised how few insights I have retained. Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.

In this brilliantly articulated and refreshingly clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small-General Relativity and Quantum Theory-is resolved. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Today, physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are feverishly working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. Brian Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away the layers of mystery surrounding string theory to reveal a universe that consists of eleven dimensions, where the fabric of space tears and repairs itself, and all matter, from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas, is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy.

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene