text: I'm not a cosmologist, but Stephen Hawking's Universe was so simply written it is essentially condescending.  The language is akin to the level one would read in a newspaper.  Moreover, the pictures are second rate pre-contact lense Hubble knock-offs (despite being published in 1997), and the book has very little to do with Stephen Hawking.  Sure, he wrote the foreward and did some editing, but it lacks the wit and wonder of a Hawking work.  Naming the book after him and putting his picture on the front is misleading.  I AM a chemist, and despite this, Filkin's descriptions of Chemical discoveries left even me guessing because he was attempting to dumb-down ideas that aren't dumb-downable, and didn't include diagrams which would be helpful for anyone trying to understand the concepts (like neutrino capturing or particle acceleration).  If you want to learn some cosmology, read "A Brief History of Time" or "A Short History of the Universe".  These are simply written but informative works that won't leave you waiting for substance
  