This book is the written text of a Martin Rees lecture given at the first Scribner Lectures, co-sponsored by Princeton University and Princeton University Press.  The lecture was aimed to the non-specialist and is a very broad look at ‘where we live’. In the lecture Rees stated that, -the occupational risk for any researcher is that, through a narrow focus on tractable bite sized problems, one loses the broader perspective.  That is why  in their own interests  professional scientists should try to convey their work to non-specialists-.  This is one reason for Rees writing this book

Writing for non-specialists can be very difficult.  What is very simple or obvious to one person can be difficult to understand and take a lot of explanation for another.  Fortunately Rees has an easy style and is able to get his concepts across without losing either reader.

The book opens with the questions ‘Could God have made the world any differently? Was the outcome -natural- or should we be surprised at what happened? And could there be other universes?’  Rees states that these questions, formerly in the realm of speculation, are now being addressed by scientists.

One may ask -Can these questions be answered in a scientific manner?-  The pre-eminent mystery is why anything exists at all, a question that belongs more to philosophers and theologians. However, Rees believes that the technical advances of the later decades of the 20th century have enriched our perspective of our cosmic habitat to the extent that they can now be addressed.

In order to answer these questions the reader needs to be aware of some of the basic concepts now accepted by cosmologists. The first part of the book therefore is an introduction to present day cosmological thought from the Big Bang to Biospheres. Here Rees explores areas such as the planets and stars, life and intelligence, pregalactic history and black holes and time machines. This is followed by speculation into the mechanisms behind the ‘Beginning and the End’ which covers how things began and the long-range future. All of these ideas are explained without the use of complicated mathematics.

The last part of the book, ‘Fundamentals and Conjectures’ looks at the way cosmic research is heading and ends with speculation about the existence of parallel universes or ‘multiverses’, of which ours is just one, a concept that Rees evidently prefers.  Rees does give a ‘health warning’ that the concept is highly speculative and, in our present state of knowledge, no more than a hunch.  This is, to me, the most interesting part of the book.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book, and will no doubt read it again, but I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of further reading list. Rees does say that this book is a broad approach for non-specialists and such a reading list may be just too deep to appeal to the non-specialist.  To be honest I found Rees’ earlier book, Just Six Numbers, a more satisfying read and it is recommended to those who find the treatment of the topics in this book too broad.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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