The story that follows is everything you'd expect from Mezrich. Written almost entirely from Roberts' point of view, it delivers clever people doing clever things, betrayals and ingenious schemes and the sort of narrative arc that urges you to consume it all in one sitting...it is grippingly written...

An intriguing tale

An exhilarating experience as the authors' cerebral buzzsaw opens up your mind

A cut above the competition... chapters by Stewart and Cohen offering a profound and clear explanation of Darwin's theories and their modern updating... it is exhilarating to feel yourself immersed in such well-expressed and up-to-date debates

Lloyd thinks he has found a new way to explain one of the most basic questions in science: Why is the world so complex?... Fascinating and profoundly comforting... Seth Lloyd certainly gives his readers a lot of bang for their buck

Lloyd is one of the gurus of quantum and information theory, and in this accessible book he presents an insightful new perspective on the cosmos

Renowned for his innovative conflation of pure physics and computation, Lloyd is well positioned to hack his way into space-time and come back with answers

What an astonishing book! Lloyd is at the forefront of a revolution

A marvelously capacious book that will attract serious readers everywhere

Any reader who has avoided science for fear of being overwhelmed will find a friendly guide in Potter ... This clear and smoothly written look at the mind-boggling history of everything is both informative and provocative

This Portable History of the Universe is awe-inspiring in its reach. It ranges easily over millions of miles and takes in billions of centuries at a stroke, yet at the same time it's somehow intimate and conversational in its manner. The engaging medium is the message, perhaps: to contemplate the universe, suggests Potter, is "to find ourselves at two poles at the same time: we are uniquely special and we are insignificant". Playing both poles against the middle with extraordinary aplomb, his book opens up to us the vastness of the cosmos

Less folksy and biographical than Bill Bryson, less zany than a Bluffer's Guide. But many a bang for your buck, washed down with quotations from the greats ... Potter has an engaging style

With marvellous clarity, compassion, erudition, humour and open-mindedness, Potter blasts us through the vast vacuum of space