Briefer for Busier Times

I'm not sure how many years it's been since I read Stephen Hawking's phenomenal best seller - A Brief History of Time.  It was published in 1988, and I'm guessing I read it at some time in the mid 1990s.  I recall finding parts of it really fascinating, but much of it a bit overwhelming - so I was really pleased to see that Hawking and collaborator, Leonard Mlodinow teamed up to reissue a revised, renamed and somewhat easier version of the classic.

This Briefer History of Time is a great introduction for the lay person, and of course for the interested high school student, to major concepts of cosmology, including the somewhat mind-bending concepts of Einstein's theories of general and special relativity - and the truly mind-blowing and bizarre concepts of quantum and string theory.

I found the inclusion of God in this work to be problematic.  Instead of discussing how current theories relate to beliefs in God, the authors at times seem to just assume - without evidence that God does exist.  Consider this excerpt from a discussion of the search for unified theories:

"Actually, the idea that God might want to change his mind is an example of the fallacy, pointed out by St. Augustine, of imagining God as a being existing in time.  Time is a property only of the universe that God created.  Presumably, He knew what He intended when He set it up!"

And a bit later in the book, in the conclusion they write:

"The question remains, however: how or why were the laws and the initial state of the universe chosen?" ("[C]hosen" seems an odd choice of language here)! 

I think it would have just been better to include a separate chapter on the religious implications of the current state of cosmology, but regardless, the book is still very strong and compelling.