Stephen Hawking's Universe by  John Boslough
	(Illus.) Quill/Morrow 1985 159pp. 0-380-70763-2 Index GA **

Boslough introduces us in a warm and personal way to Stephen Hawking, a courageous cosmologist with a mind that makes him the "equal of Einstein." In the process, we get a picture of the development of cosmological thought from Galileo to the "Big Bang" and "Bubble Universe." Here is the clearest and most concise explanation of Einstein's theory of general relativity I've ever seen and it is with equal competence that Boslough explains Hawking's contribution to our understanding of black holes, including the even stranger concept of "exploding black holes." We also get to explore what it was like at 10^-43 seconds after the "Big Bang." Boslough's genius is in presenting Hawking in a personal and loving way. He enables us to see Hawking's sense of humor and the acuity of his brilliant mind--a mind trapped in a body made immobile by a long encounter with Lou Gehrig's disease, a mind comfortable with quarks and quasars, a mind whose ultimate goal is a complete understanding of how the universe works.

--Reviewed by William Kyselka in Science Books and Films, 22/1 (September/November 1986), p. 33.