what do you prefer - road to reality or brief history of time ?

[where_the]

I mean to say whose popular sci-books do you like more Stephen Hawking's or Roger Penrose 's ?


I like Penrose as he doesn't shy from using mathematics. So he is likely to present a better picture to the general public. And that may even ignite their interest in mathematics.

Also he states clearly where he is expressing his own views. And what's more there are exercises in his book too.

[CFDFEAGURU]

I like the "Road to Reality". Great book.

Thanks
Matt

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

I am reading Penrose's Road to Reality now. Whilst I do like the fact that, as you say, he doesn't shy away from bringing up all kinds of mathematics, if you've never encountered things like manifolds before, it's virtually impossible to get by reading only the book itself. You'll need to visit Wikipedia a fair amount and do some other research and practice problems. Penrose's book does have problems in it as footnotes, but there generally aren't many for each topic and I would therefore suggest finding rigorous exercises for that particular topic (e.g. Fourier series) online and doing them. It can make a lot of what he says easier to digest.