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A review by iceeckos12
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by Sean Carroll
2.0
This falls closer to a 2.5/5, but I'm rounding down for reasons I'll explain below.
I want to preface this by saying that I'm currently in Calc II, and I've read a few surface-level astrophysics books, the kind of which was described in the intro by Carroll. That is to say that I'd like to think I'm not completely ignorant to this particular subject, and was in fact very excited by the concept of this book.
However the reason I gave a 2.5 and rounded down was because I believe that this book failed to deliver on its whole premise, which was again outlined in the intro.
Like I said, I'm currently in Calc II and have taken basic physics before. In the intro, Carroll stated that you didn't need more than basic high school algebra to understand this book - which in my opinion was just flat-out untrue (or I'm more of a blockhead when it comes to math than I realized). Despite reading and rereading passages, I found myself bewildered for the majority of this book. Carroll would outline some complicated mathematical concept, and then go "so OBVIOUSLY based on /this/ we can make /that/ assumption - " when, no! It really isn't that obvious! (I STILL have no idea what a metric tensor is.)
I really wanted to like this book, but I simply couldn't get into it. I learned a lot of interesting terms, and the final few sections about black holes were absolutely fascinating, but I can already tell that none of the more complicated underlying concepts are going to stick.
I guess the bottom line is - Carroll assumed too much of his reader's ability to understand his technical jargon.
I want to preface this by saying that I'm currently in Calc II, and I've read a few surface-level astrophysics books, the kind of which was described in the intro by Carroll. That is to say that I'd like to think I'm not completely ignorant to this particular subject, and was in fact very excited by the concept of this book.
However the reason I gave a 2.5 and rounded down was because I believe that this book failed to deliver on its whole premise, which was again outlined in the intro.
Like I said, I'm currently in Calc II and have taken basic physics before. In the intro, Carroll stated that you didn't need more than basic high school algebra to understand this book - which in my opinion was just flat-out untrue (or I'm more of a blockhead when it comes to math than I realized). Despite reading and rereading passages, I found myself bewildered for the majority of this book. Carroll would outline some complicated mathematical concept, and then go "so OBVIOUSLY based on /this/ we can make /that/ assumption - " when, no! It really isn't that obvious! (I STILL have no idea what a metric tensor is.)
I really wanted to like this book, but I simply couldn't get into it. I learned a lot of interesting terms, and the final few sections about black holes were absolutely fascinating, but I can already tell that none of the more complicated underlying concepts are going to stick.
I guess the bottom line is - Carroll assumed too much of his reader's ability to understand his technical jargon.