Despite the author's engaging style, I suspect the glimmers of understanding may have just been an illusion. A glossary would have helped. ( )

I'm one of those people who likes to know a little bit about a lot of things, so I have several Very Short Introductions that I'm gradually getting around to reading.

Despite being a book for the layman, I still felt like the maths and concepts in the book were just a little over my head, which is really what I get for trying to jump right into cosmology and the functioning of the universe without all the intermediate steps. It's also a living field with new developments all the time, so the fact that the book's over ten years old means even I knew enough to know that parts of it were out of date now, inevitably.

I know a little bit more about cosmology now than I did when I started, though, and that was all I wanted, so I'd say the book succeeded at what it set out to do. ( )