Julia Cort

This is a thoroughly enjoyable, but greatly simplified overview of Greene's book on string theory. The book includes a great introduction to both Einstein's theories and to Quantum Mechanics before launching into its history and future forecast for string theory, whereas the TV series spends more time on the preliminaries and only touches on string theory, which makes sense. Greene is a great host--his abilities clearly extend beyond writing and teaching. The graphics used to illustrate things are very good--although a bit over the top at times. Highly, highly recommended, as is the follow-up PBS series.… (mere)

Another slick (perhaps too slick in its use of special effects) production hosted by the very affable Greene. The four episodes seem to be more designed to stand alone, however, so there is a bit of duplication between them. Best of all, however, are the clever ways concepts like the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and others are explained by Greene using props and special effects--not the too slick ones. I also like the various "talking head" physicists, many of them whom we also saw in Green's previous Nova series "The Elegant Universe". Like Greene, they are a bit older here, but they come to seem like old friends after seeing so many short clips of them. Overall, very well done and highly recommended. But it will make you want to dig deeper into the subject by reading Greene's books.… (mere)