Big Bang Books
Big Bang Books is a collection of reading guides and reviews for books with real physics in them.
Physicists are real people; they find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, lose their temper and have bad hair days just like everybody else. The books featured in this section are a mix of fact and fantasy, but they all show some of the passion, hard work, disappointment and elation that physicists go through.
If you're looking for a book to read apart from your physics textbooks, please browse our list of reading guides and book reviews below.
Reading Guides
These guides can be used by book clubs or individual readers. They include explanations of the science in the books, questions for discussion and suggestions for further reading.
Free to download in PDF format.
Book Reviews
More reviews will be added here on a regular basis. If you want to contribute your own book review to this section please email editor@physics.org.
The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials
Mary and John Gribbin
In Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, Lyra and Will go on a fantastical adventure. Many of the weird and wonderful ...
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As She Climbed Across the Table
Jonathan Lethem
Particle physicist Alice Coombs falls in love with an artificially created ‘vacuum intelligence’. As Alice’s ...
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STORM - The Infinity Code
EL Young
When Andrew Minkel, a teenage software multi-millionaire, decides to spend his fortune on saving the world from itself, he gathers a crack team ...
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How the Universe Got its Spots
Janna Levin
A highly personal account of Levin’s life as a theoretical physicist in the period between September 1998 and January 2001 and the ...
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Parallel Worlds: the Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos
Michio Kaku
A popular science book about the weird and wonderful theories of cosmology, taking in relativity, string theory, multiple ...
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Big Bang: the Most Important Scientific Discovery of all Time and why You Need to Know about it
Simon Singh
The story of the scientists who fought against the long established view of the steady-state universe and developed the ...
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