The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene

Brian Greene is seriously good at explaining things. Wow. And he's so generous to his reader. He's forever saying things like, "You're probably wondering how how this point I'm making here can be reconciled with the idea I introduced 4 pages ago." And I'm never wondering about that - I just can't keep the ideas in my head that long. But it is so nice to be treated as if I'm that smart. My husband, who is a physicist and no slouch himself, calls Brian Greene "the rock star physicist." I've got to find a way to see him speak in person.

This book is about what makes up space-time. I found the material more difficult that his previous book, The Elegant Universe, especially the middle section where he talks about whether time really exists or not. But the difficulty is worth it, because the ideas (and as I said, the explanations) are so fascinating. He talks about theoretical models for time machines, the prospects for actual time travel, what a "moment" really means.

As an added bonus, check out this fascinating Scientific American article: Was Einstein Wrong? A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity. Readable and surprising, it talks about how quantum non-locality undermines all of special relativity by allowing distant simultaneous events.

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Brian Greene
2004
Available from Amazon